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Following directions from the Supreme Court, the Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday, September 4, approved the allotment of sites to 1,453 farmers who lost their land to the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project (BMIC).
Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara said farmers who had lost less than one acre of land would be compensated with a 1,200 sq ft plot, while those who lost more than an acre would be given a 2,400 sq ft plot.
"Though this is not part of the Framework Agreement signed, the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise has agreed to compensate. It has already developed 574 plots, and the rest need to be approved. Four places have been identified for the same. The plots will be given in two months," he said.
The Cabinet's decision comes days after the Karnataka High Court delivered a scathing judgement on the poor implementation of the BMIC project by the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE).
Although Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy kept taking the government to task, the political response was largely centred on the toll collected by NICE allegedly illegally, while there was near complete silence on the company's utter failure to deliver on the project nearly 30 years after it was formalised.
There is practically no outrage over the fact that a private company acquired thousands of acres of land for the project but built practically nothing and instead sold off portions of the land to private players in violation of its legal obligations.
Dozens of landowners, who had gone unpaid for more than 20 years after their land was acquired for the project, had approached the High Court seeking to have the acquisition quashed. In 2025, a single-judge bench of the High Court ruled in favour of the landowners and quashed the acquisition; a division bench upheld that order on July 29.
"The facts as disclosed would clearly suggest that there is nothing nice about the NICE project except that the farmers have been robbed of their lands and livelihood of generations without payment of compensation," the High Court said while upholding the landowners' claims.
The court also strongly criticised NICE for having "utterly failed" to meet its legal obligations, and faulted the state government for failing to act on what it called "one of the biggest scams" in Karnataka.
"It appears that this BMICP may be one of the biggest scam in the State of Karnataka and it demonstrates how a State, which is the trustee of the natural resources on behalf of the citizens, can allow the private interest to flourish in utter violation of the constitutional mandate and the law to the detriment of environment, ecology and against the public interest for questionable considerations," the High Court observed.
Read: NICE and BMIC: How a mega project in Karnataka became a 30-year monument to failure
