CM’s fix for rain-hit city: 35-km Rajakaluve

By Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: The incomplete Rajakaluve (major drain) network in the city is the big culprit, declared Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday, two days after Bengaluru witnessed flooding of the worst kind with a prominent tech park, a government residential complex and a well known research facility seeing water levels rising waist high.

Bommai proposed a solution saying the construction of the pending 35 km long Rajakaluve stretch will be completed before January 2022. “Instructions have been issued to the chief commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to prepare a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the construction of primary, secondary and tertiary Rajakaluves which is expected to cost us around Rs.900 crore. Once the DPR is ready, the required funds will be released on priority”, the CM told the media after chairing a meeting here on Wednesday which was attended by all Bengaluru ministers.

The state government in 2019-20 had sanctioned `1,040 crore for the construction ofRajakaluves across the city of which 45 km of drains have been completed and a 35 km stretch is pending.

The state had been receiving incessant rains in the last two months and the capital in the last one week resulting in natural tanks overflowing and rain water entering several localities. Residential areas situated downstream of water bodies were inundated as Rajakaluves were unable to handle the huge volumes of water and the immediate priority is to repair and re-build them. The Rajakaluves in 110 villages that were merged with BBMP in 2008, are built with mud and have to be replaced with concrete. Besides, these big drains have to be widened to improve their carrying capacity. There are four valleys in the city-Vrushabhavathi, Hebbal, Challaghatta and Koramangala and the total stretch of Rajakaluves is around 842 km.