Yeshwanthpur: Fewer black spots, despite many slums

By Sanjay R.Murty | NT

Yeshwanthpur is a wellknown locality in Bengaluru. It has a major railway junction that connects the city with northern Karnataka and various parts of the country. Yeshwanthpur ward (Ward 37) includes Yeshwanthpur Railway Colony, Dr Ambedkar Nagar, Bazaar Street (Yeshwanthpur Market), LIC Colony, LN Colony and BK Nagar. The ward is relatively small and has most civic issues sorted.

Being part of an old area, the ward does not have major watersupply issues. A resident of Dr Ambedkar Nagar told News Trail that she gets enough water through two sources – Cauvery and CMC water supply. The ward is reportedly supplied with free water under the MLA’s initiative of providing water connections to all houses.

The area consists of lower middle-class households and narrow streets with clusters of small houses. Many internal lanes in the area have been concretized. Whitetopping has also been done on several main roads of the ward.

According to the residents of Dr Ambedkar Colony and BK Nagar, household garbage is collected every day in the morning and there are no issues regarding the same. The ward, which has no dearth of slums and shanties, has very few ‘black spots’ where garbage is dumped without getting cleared for weeks.

A man was seen arriving on a motorcycle with three bags of dry waste at noon on Sunday. He stopped at a spot on B K Nagar Main Road and flung the bags on the roadside where there was already some garbage dumped. On being asked if the garbage collection was irregular, he denied and said that he could not find the collection vehicle on Sunday. “This is the spot where they clean the dumped garbage soon, which is why I kept the bags here,” said the apparently educated citizen.

The spot is reportedly used by the pourakarmikas to transfer garbage from their tipper autos to trucks. Road users said that the spot used to be worse a few years ago. It had improved recently though it is still being used as a place to dump household waste, they said.

Yeshwanthpur ward is part of the Rajarajeshwari Nagar Assembly Constituency and the BBMP’s Yeshwanthpur sub-division in the Rajarajeshwari Nagar zone. The BBMP Maternity Hospital near Yeshwanthpur Railway Station has been converted into a Covid Emergency Treatment Centre.

The board on the hospital’s facade reads ‘Rajarajeshwari Nagar Assembly Constituency’. The BBMP Nodal Officer for Yeshwanthpur ward said that the hospital now gives preference to Covid-19 patients, but treats other cases as well. He added that the facility can be converted into a full-fledged general hospital in the days to come.

The Covid Care Centre is located on the road leading to Yeshwanthpur Railway Station. This road, known as Bazaar Street, also has many traders on both sides. This often led to congestion and traffic jams. The nodal officer told News Trail that two one-way dedicated corridors were made to make sure that patients do not get stuck on their way to the hospital.

These have also enabled easy movement of passengers between the railway station and Yeshwanthpur Circle. The corridors are singlelane barricaded and grill-covered stretches which make sure that the market is separated from the hospital’s approach road. These corridors also cater to the 90-E BMTC buses that connect Yeshwanthpur Railway Station to Majestic via Malleswaram 8th Main Road – popularly known as the ‘90 route’.

Residents of the B K Nagar slum have been rehabilitated into houses in several complexes constructed along B K Nagar Main Road. Each complex is a four-storey structure with 32 houses. The nodal officer said that 264 houses have been allotted under the first phase while phase-2 of the project is being executed. “The complexes came up under the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) Housing Scheme,” he informed.

Several maintenance projects were undertaken in the ward by service providers such as the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom). As usual, the restoration of roads after the completion of these projects has not been done properly. However, the restoration work in the Yeshwan