On October 23, Residents Watch wrote about a community fridge placed by Saibaba temple on the 19th Main footpath, so the poor can make use of it. Today, Sector 7 resident Ratnakar BNS Ratnakar did his bit for the underprivileged.
He decided to donate the harvest from his terrace and community garden to the community fridge. “I placed cabbage, brinjal, and Amaranthus leaves harvested today,” he told Residents Watch. “Hope the same will be relished by the users. We should encourage more such community fridges across HSR. I feel elated.”
We are elated too. If more residents start caring about the underprivileged, the world will be such a better place.
Sector 4 residents stopped the installation of a mobile tower atop a ground plus two floor house by Airtel yesterday. It’s unusual for the telecom service provider to opt for such a low-lying house that could not only be harmful to the residents.
Airtel planned to erect a tower on top of this house in Sector 4
House No 228 is right in the heart of a residential area
According to the residents, the person responsible behind the installation attempt was the owner of house number 228. “Although Debnath is the house owner, the No Objection Certiticate (NOC) was signed by his friend living next door,” said resident Kavitha Reddy. “Residents around have stopped the work and the BBMP Joint Commissioner (Bommanahalli) confirmed that he was not even aware that such a permission was given.”
Now the residents have asked the Sector 4 Residents Welfare Association to up this issue with the BBMP and issue a warning to the owner of the house. “Just for the sake of money, people like Debnath and his neighbour are putting the entire locality in danger,” said Reddy. “Telecom towers are banned in residential areas and these people are violating the law and playing with the health of citizens.”
DO MOBILE TOWERS CAUSE CANCER?
According to the American Cancer Society, the radiofrequency waves emitted by mobile towers do not cause DNA damage that can lead to cancer. In London, you will be hard pressed to find a mobile tower, because they are all installed outside the city. What you will see instead of boosters inside the city. In a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by film actress Juhi Chawla in 2015, her lawyer cited this and asked India to follow suit. However, India’s telecom regulatory authority maintains that its standards are 10-times stricter than the globalstandards. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has made a public statement that the radiation from cell phones. mobile towers and Wi-Fi as “possibly carcinogenic”. In April 2017, the Supreme Court gave a landmark ruling in favour of a cancer patient who alleged that he got it because of a mobile tower next to his office. The country’s highest court ordered the deactivation of the tower.
CHECK THE MOBILE TOWER RADIATION NEAR YOUR HOUSE
A year ago, the ministry of communications set up a mobile tower radiation monitoring website. You can check out if your mobile tower is emitting harmful radiation that is above the standards specified by India. Just CLICK HERE and you are good to go.
This morning, former Home Minister and BTM Layout MLA Ramalinga Reddy laid the foundation stone for the construction of a skywalk between Teacher’s Colony-Sector 5 and HSR Layout Sector 6. The irony of it is that it was inaugurated earlier by Bommanahalli MLA Satish Reddy in July 2018. Read that story here.
When it was first inaugurated, the work on the overbridge near 9th Main Road and Sector 5 near the bus stand on the other side of Outer Ring Road (ORR) never got off to a start. The work was not allowed to begin because certain jurisdictional permissions were not given.
Some residents wondered how a skywalk could come up where a Metro was supposed to come up. The contractor responded by saying that the height alignment of 28 feet will not interfere with the Metro coming up at 45 feet. However, while he had the go-ahead from the Bommanahalli side of ORR, Sector 5 comes under the Jakkasandra ward handled by a different MLA.
Today, BTM Layout MLA Ramalinga Reddy inaugurated the skywalk yet again, this time on his side of the road, and the work should now proceed briskly. This skywalk will be built by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. To be built by Adonai Shelters, this will ease the road crossing blues of several elderly citizens and students. In addition, there will be electronic escalators to help the elderly and the disabled from using the skywalk.
This would be Adonai’s 22nd skywalk in Bangalore. If all goes well, the road over bridge should be ready by the end of this year.
The Mughals restaurant on 17th Cross in Sector 4 had done it for several years. After it shut down, The Egg Factory took its place.
However, the violation remains despite the Sector 4 residents pointing out the glaring irregularities. The pictures below convey the encroachment of the footpath better than anything else.
If you spot similar irregularities, whatsapp us (9880585748) and we will do stories on them too.
A thirty-six-year-old doctor fractured her leg when she was hit by another two wheeler on Outer Ring Road near Agara flyover.
At around 7am on October 24, Dr Amrutha Chauhan was near the exit ramp of Agara flyover on Outer Ring Road in front of Green Bar & Restaurant when another speeding two wheeler rider collided with her vehicle. She fell on the road along with the scooter, causing grievous injuries to her right leg.
One of the passersbys called for an ambulance and she was rushed to Columbia Asia hospital for treatment as an inpatient. A case of rash and negligent driving against Keshava, the rider of Honda Unicorn (No KA01-JA7581) is lodged by the HSR cops.
Dr Amrutha is a resident of Mantri Sarovar apartments in Sector 4. “I am still in the hospital,” Dr Amruta told Residents Watch. “Since it’s an open wound as there are multiple fractures and the bone had come out, the doctors are keeping me under observation before they can discharge me.” Recalling the incident, she said, “I was riding on the Agara flyover. I came on to the main Outer Ring Road and gave an indicator to move right and just when I was proceeding towards it, I was suddenly hit by a vehicle from behind.”
Two wheeler thefts are quite common across HSR as the last 45 days of our reportage has shown. However, this is a first in the last 1.5 months. A car has been stolen in Sector 2 and no less than the Toyota Innova which is costlier than the average cars on the streets.
Representative image
B Venkatesh, a 60-year-old resident of 24th Main, 25th Cross in Sector 2, HSR Layout, parked his 2014-model of Innova (Reg No KA01-ML5013) in front of his house at around 6.30pm on October 24. When he woke up the next day and went out to check on his car at around 6.45am, it was nowhere to be seen. An FIR was lodged the same day at 945am and the cops are investigating.
A literature festival no matter where it’s held in the city is a matter of pride for the residents and readers. When every TV soap, film or business strategy relies on writing, it’s but natural to showcase the power of writing to the world and encourage the habit of reading. It is with this objective that we are highlighting this event eventhough it’s being held in the centre of Bangalore.
Held once a year, the 7th edition of Bangalore Literature Festival is two day event at Lalit Ashok hotel on Kumarakrupa Road near Bangalore Golf Course from October 27 to October 28. The HSR extension residents who are part of this festival include author Bhaskar Chattopadhyay (who stays in Suncity Apt in Iblur) who will hold the fort on crime and detection. And then, there’s bestselling romance author Preeti Shenoy, a resident of Bellandur, and romance author Nandita Bose from Harlur Road. Three members of the Litt Fest team are residents of this area including Subodh Shankar (Bellandur), Shrabonti Bagchi (Harlur Road), and Festival Director Shinie Anthony (Mantri Sarovar in Sector 1).
“It’s a community funded festival by individual contributors from the citizens of Bangalore,” says Subodh Shankar who is also the co-founder of Atta Galatta, the exhibition space in Koramangala. “It belongs to the people of Bangalore. In its seventh year, we have close to 200 authors, around 150 sessions of programming in five stages parallelly. Two are dedicated exclusively for children. There are grand musical concerts to close the festivities for each day.”
Some of the most recognised names on the literary circuit will be there including Vijay Seshadri, the first person to win a Pulitzer for poetry. And then, there are Aatish Taseer, Ashwin Sanghi, Appupen, Chitra Subramanian, Barkha Dutt, Kiran Manral, N Ponnappa, Nandan Nilekani, Naina Lal Kidwai, Saba Naqvi, Rhea Saran, Samit Basu, Sarika, Shashi Tharoor, Shoba Narayan, Shoma Chaudhury (Tehelka), Srinivasan Jain, Vinta Nanda, Tushita Patel, Vivek Shanbagh, Girish Karnad, VK Karthika, and Ramachandra Guha, among many more.
Festival Director Shinie Anthony is an HSR resident
From panels on #metoo to fake news to the upcoming general elections, there are several topics being discussed under one roof. Importantly, one stage is dedicated to children below 10 years and another for those above that age limit. The timings are between 10am and 7pm and it’s free for all.
Leave whatever else you are doing in the next two days and head over here. It only happens once in a year. CLICK HERE for the full schedule.
Everytime, the roads are paved, they raise the height. The same is at work when they erect culverts over drains. The best examples are the ones done at 5th Main and 9th Main. With such heights, residents fear that the water will enter their homes much more easily due to their higher elevation.
One resident even said that although Bangalore is 900 metres above sea level, it is getting flooded because of these foolish practices by the civic agencies. But why is the BBMP doing it? “So they don’t have to desilt the drains everytime,” said Sector 3 resident Mohan. “Just raise the height and it will take care of the extra water. And if there is a blockage, they just remove the slabs at the intersections and put them back at their own time and pace. All their work is ad-hoc. There is no proper longterm plan about the issue of drains.”
Resident Srinivas DN has slammed the BBMP for its shoddy quality of culverts. Posting a picture as proof, he highlights the elevation of the culvert and adds that the cement work is so bad that it comes off within a couple of months. Will the BBMP high command and the state government sort out the system before it sinks us all?
The commissioners appointed by the Karnataka High Court have just now wound up their visit of HSR Layout to check the status of potholes. As reported earlier, a group of proactive residents across Bangalore filed a public interest litigation about the shoddy state of potholes in the city. Based on that, the court gave a deadline to the BBMP last month. Later, the civic body claimed that there were zero potholes in several zones, including Bommanahalli.
18th Cross, Sector 7, HSR Layout
In response to an appeal by the petitioners, Residents Watch provided pictures of some glaring potholes that we came across. Those pictures were submitted to the court. And again, a day before the hearing on October 23, we took pictures of the potholes we had submitted earlier to prove that their condition hadn’t changed despite the court ruling. This morning, the commissioners toured the city’s areas, including HSR Layout, to look at it themselves. After the tour, they have declared that some roads that we had identified require the relaying of the entire stretch and not just pothole filling. That’s even better for the residents living in those areas.
If you have come across glaring potholes, Whatsapp us (98805-85748), so we could highlight those as well. Just remember that they have to be of the existing potholes and not something shot a month ago, because things could have changed now.
In August, Residents Watch had sought out CultFit about the increasing inconvenience that both the residents and the Swabhimaana Tree Park visitors were experiencing on 15th B Main, Sector 3, as their employees were parking their cars all along the road.
The management of CultFit promised to us that they were in the process of buying a parcel of land to precisely tackle this issue. And now, we are pleased to inform that they have kept their word. All the cars of their employees are now being parked on an empty site on 19th Cross, behind their administrative office building on 18th Cross. In addition, the dirty water from the office that was flooding the footpath has stopped too.
SOME PROBLEMS REMAIN
However, some problems remain. We urge them to resolve this as soon as possible too. The rooftop chimney of their office building faces the residential houses instead of the sky and over a dozen split ACs face the road, spitting out hot air towards the pedestrians. Since CultFit now owns the entire building, it is its job to ensure that they or the landowner shift the ACs to the terrace.
That’s not all. The residents are complaining that the CultFit gym on 19th Main in Sector 4 is causing major inconvenience to residents as visitors park all along the road, blocking their pathways.
This chimney points to the residential houses when it should be facing the sky
These split ACs should be placed on the terrace and not facing the road
Venting her ire on social media, resident Veena Bala writes, “We always have Cult Fit members parking right in front of our gate. No amount of complaints to them with pictures of their members parking has been obliged. And none of their centres have parking, so all their members park on the roads, blocking traffic, and many right in front of the gate where we cannot even get our vehicles in or out. We have to wait till their members finish the class. And again if we are not outside, another member will park and go.” An easier way to tackle this problem is if CultFit goes for ‘valet parking’ here just the way they have it at their corporate office on 18th Cross. And if there are other measures, they could take, like buying a parcel of land just for their visitors, that would be great too!
Following the police complaint by the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) that a girl student had gone missing from October 13, the cops swung into action immediately and traced her when she was on her way to Hyderabad. They alerted their Andhra Pradesh counterparts who intercepted her in Ananthpur and handed her back to her relatives in Bangalore. The case of 19-year-old Bharati Gurjar is amusing too as she hadn’t gone missing because she had eloped with anyone or someone had kidnapped her. NIFT officials informed Residents Watch that since there were 10 days of college holidays, she had planned to visit Hyderabad with her friends without informing her college or family members. That was her undoing. But then, if she had informed, they would not have allowed her to go. Unable to decide between the two options, she decided to lie to the college authorities that she was going to stay with her relatives in Banashankari. But the college authorities smelt a rat and checked with her relatives if she had reached their place. Since her father was in the Indian Foreign Service, it was also a prestigious case for the institute. With her family’s permission, the college authorities filed an FIR because the cops cannot trace anyone’s call without the court’s permission. And that can only happen with an FIR. Once the FIR was lodged, the cops accessed the SMS records of Bharati and found that in one SMS, she had told someone she’s coming to Hyderabad. Tracing her GPS coordinates, the cops found that she had reached Ananthpur in Andhra Pradesh. They alerted the cops in the nearest police station who picked her and brought her back to Bangalore.
68-year old Kumud Sinha missing since Saturday is reunited with her family. Unable to remember the apartment name, Kumud did the next best thing. She went back to her hometown and asked her family over there to call her husband back in Bangalore. Her son flew to her native place and got her back.
Speaking to Residents Watch, son Raju Sinha said, “As usual, she went out to buy some fruits. However, this time she went out of the building through the gate she never used before. She forgot the way back and tried to search for some time. As she did not know the building name, she decided to go back to our home town as that is the only address she knew. When she reached there, she asked our friends to give us a call as she did not carry a mobile or know our number. I immediately flew to my home town and got her back. She is good now.”
Expressing his happiness, her son Raju has thanked Deputy Commissioner of Police Ahad and his team for forming a team to trace her. The cops had done their best too. “They sent her pic to all the police stations in Bengaluru,” said Raju. “They came to our house and checked the CCTV footage in and around the building. They reached out to help groups if they have any information.”
In his message to the DCP to call off the search, he sent the latest picture given below and said, “Sir, this my mom’s picture, she looks fine now. My relative came here last night and took care of her. Sir I am very thankful for all your help and support.”
