The Janata Dal (Secular) Sunday launched an agitation against the proposed Greater Bengaluru Integrated Township (GBIT) project, which has been dubbed as the country’s first AI-powered integrated township. The township is slated to come up over an area of 8,400 acres in the Bengaluru South district.
H D Kumaraswamy, Union Minister for Heavy Industries, who addressed a rally virtually from New Delhi, said the party would not allow even an inch of land to be acquired for the project. He alleged that Bengaluru Development Minister D K Shivakumar – who is pushing for the project – was doing so to loot land around Bidadi.
“They are furnishing wrong information to the public about the township. They had lied that about 3,000 acres of the land required was government land. However, in reality, it is far less,” he said.
Nikhil Kumaraswamy, President, JD(S) youth wing, who led the protest Sunday, said farmers from Bidadi, Byramangala and other surrounding villages have been protesting for several days against the project. “The majority of those who will lose land are small farmers. The state government is trying to grab this land from the farmers,” he added.
He said that GBIT officials were carrying out surveys without consulting the farmers. The farmers were being threatened to give their land away, Nikhil Kumaraswamy alleged.
The preliminary notification was issued for the township in March this year. Earlier this month, Shivakumar had said that GBIT would be developed as India’s first and largest AI-powered integrated township. Envisioned as a second central business hub of Karnataka, the project is estimated to cost around Rs 20,000 crore and is expected to be completed over the next three years.
Shivakumar, who had visited the area on Saturday, had said that H D Kumaraswamy had first issued the notification for the project during his tenure as CM. The government would go ahead with the project and implement it under the constraints of law, he said, adding that farmers were not opposed to the project.