Members of All Saints Church Congregation Welfare Association and other city residents held a protest on Sunday to persuade the Bangalore Metropolitan Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) to stick to their original plan.
According to the original plan, the station was to be built on Hosur Road. Instead, now BMRCL wants to build the station on the church land, after demolishing a school for children with learning and cognitive disabilities as well as an old age home. Many also fear that the construction activity will impact the heritage church structure itself.
“As per the DPR (detailed project report), the track and station box were planned under Hosur Road. The BMRCL has violated it. The BMRCL will leave behind a land with only three feet deep soil of no use. No rainwater can percolate, resulting in flooding of the church premises,” Ronald Fernandez, one of the protestors, told Deccan Herald.
The land which is inside the church premises according to the current plan will be primarily used by BMRCL to keep machinery and other equipment required which will be used for construction of Namma Metro’s Phase II project.
The All Saints Church Congregation Welfare Association and other residents want the BMRCL to use a vacant army land in the vicinity instead of cutting hundreds of trees inside the 150-year-old compound. Even the city’s Tree Committee, in its correspondence to the BMRCL, has asked the body to use the vacant military land for the purpose.
The protesters also demand that the planned station be moved 75 meters to the left and move the track under the road as originally planned in the detailed project report. These changes, activists argue, will help save the natural environment, human health, heritage and the city’s future.
They have threatened to go to court if BMRCL does not pay heed to their demands, threatening to slowing down the entire construction process of Gottigere-Nagavara Line as part of the Reach 6 of Phase-II.