The appointment of a full-time Managing Director (MD) at Rail Infrastructure Development Company-Karnataka (K-RIDE) has reportedly been delayed by the Congress-led government in the state, according to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and Yuva Morcha National President Tejasvi Surya, who made the criticism on Saturday amid the traffic woes in Bengaluru.
“In another display of lack of seriousness & intent to address Bengaluru’s decongestion issue, the Congress-led Karnataka Govt has failed to speed up the process of appointment of full-time MD at K-RIDE,” Tejasvi Surya said in a post on X.
He added, “K-RIDE, tasked with Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project doesn’t have a full-time MD. Though a notification was released to appoint, upon my intervention with the Minister for Railways, it failed to comply with basic eligibility criteria.”
The BJP leader asserted that the govt should make this a priority and re-advertise in accordance with guidelines issued by the Railway Board at the earliest. “This displays a serious lack of commitment to improving #BengaluruUrbanMobility,” he added.
BSRP is crucial and can ease mobility challenges in the city and can only be done with an appropriate full-time officer in place, he said.
“At this time, both BMRCL and K-RIDE, the most important public mobility infrastructure projects of Bengaluru do not have full-time MDs, but the Government is planning to build a 190 km tunnel road,” Tejasvi added.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka government has proposed a 190 km long tunnel to ease traffic in Bengaluru.
During a news conference on Thursday at Vidhana Soudha, DK Shivakumar, the deputy chief minister of Karnataka, stated that the government would be calling for public bids for the tunnel within 45 days.
Shivakumar added that he had already discussed the matter with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and that the latter had given him a favorable response.