A master plan is being prepared to check the haphazard growth of Bangalore City and it will be implemented soon, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said.

Replying to Capt Ganesh Karnik (on behalf of Bhanuprakash) in the Legislative Council on Thursday, the CM said, “A draft copy of the master plan was submitted to the government recently. It was returned for revision after making certain observations.”

“Once the document is ready, objections will be called from the general public. Then, it will be implemented in letter and spirit,” he added.

Siddaramaiah said three Chief Ministers of the previous BJP government — B S Yeddyurappa, D V Sadananda Gowda and Jagadish Shettar — should have done it; but they did not.

The Congress government is committed to implementing the master plan. The previous government only came out with a temporary master plan which resulted in several irregularities. Bangalore City has grown hapazardly in the last five years causing various problems to citizens, he noted.

The Chief Minister said the Congress government, which came to power two months ago, has not de-notified any land and it will not do so in the coming days too.

There is a general feeling among the masses that the previous government did a lot of conversion of land.

JD (S) floor Leader M C Nanaiah urged the CM to put the brakes on the construction of hi-rise buildings in Bangalore.

The multi-storeyed apartments being built in the city are the root cause for many problems. The government should enact a Bill to check this trend, he demanded.

Captain Karnik noted that there is confusion among the people due to non-implementation of the full-fledged master plan.

A lot of land conversions have happenings even in the green belt areas.  Since the Chief Minister heads the Angalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA), a master plan should be brought into force to check illegalities in land conversions, he urged.