A senior official of the BBMP admits that although it is not difficult to remove commercial units from residential areas, the authorities are not serious about it because a lot of money changes hands. "It is not difficult at all. All it needs is political will. Unfortunately , there is lot of money involved and a strong nexus exists between the traders, police and politicians," he says.
Recalling that it was only after repeated complaints and protests failed and resident welfare associations approached the high court that the BBMP issued a public notice and then served individual notices to commercial establishments in residential areas, he observes that it took citizen activists and their continued protests to achieve this.
“It is because of the proactive role of the people that you are seeing some action like serving of notices to these units. The BBMP is likely to wake up only after the high court pulls it up like it did with the illegal flex banners,” the officer adds, pointing out that after the court’s intervention thousands of flex banners vanished within two days from the city.
Ask BBMP commissioner, Manjunath Prasad about the problem and he says over 12,000 individual notices have been served on commercial operators asking them to shift from the residential localities. But the civic body does not have the figures on the number of commercial units that have actually left, which speaks volumes about how ineffective it has been in its attempt to free residential areas from growing commercialisation
