Midweek Musings 33 22.07.26

Decimating Lalbagh constitutes an environmental crime and a CITES offence.  

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse


The Government of Karnataka’s proposed Bangalore Tunnel Road Project seeks to de-notify and acquire land from the urban forest – Lalbagh - to create seamless road connectivity from Hebbal in the north of Bangalore to Silk Board Junction in the south east of the ‘Garden City’s’ Southeast and K R Puram in the northeast.



One news report says “the₹17,000-crore infrastructure initiative is designed to decongest the city's arterial routes through an extensive underground corridor. The proposal envisions around 35 km of tunnels linking key junctions such as Hebbal, K.R. Puram, and Central Silk Board, offering signal-free, high-speed connectivity and easing the burden on surface roads”.

The problem does not lie in inadequate road network. The problem lies in multiple car /private transport. Where is the need for a single person owning three to five cars? Neither is there parking space, nor space for movement of these vehicles.

Bangalore surely has unmanageable traffic challenges. Unfortunately planning is amiss. Multiple modes of public transport caters to the mobility of citizens. Five to six car ownership per head does not exactly solve the traffic congestion. Flyovers, ring roads, designed arterial roads, odd-even usage of vehicles, increasing traffic police personnel, better traffic management, nothing is helping.

Acquiring Protected Lung Spaces to create more space for unsustainable amount of traffic is missing the woods for the forest. Wasting 17000 crores of public funding for tunnelling for road construction surely has more sustainable options? Bangalore has an estimated 25.2 lakh cars as of 30.06.2026. “In June alone, 13,519 new private cars were added to the city's roads. In addition, nearly three lakh yellow-board taxis operate across Bengaluru”. That is unsustainable. Effective public transport is the only answer. Private transport can be justified only for frail and infirm, physically challenged persons at the most. Last mile connectivity.


A random survey will show how many rural youth have migrated to Bangalore from rural Karnataka and beyond. On not having secured livelihood they have taken loans to purchase cars and run it as taxis to earn a living. How many millions of human beings can Bangalore sustain?

Imagine if this kind of budget can be invested in rural areas in small scale industries, sanitation, health care education infrastructure, insurance etc? It will not just develop rural areas, but generate employment, secure rural livelihoods, eradicate poverty, provide food security, increase health over, and tick all other development indices positively. 

Lalbagh is a sprawling lung space of approximately 250 hectares bang in the middle of the city with thousands of trees, water bodies, flowering and fruiting tree species, butterflies, birds, monkeys, jackals and loads of reptiles. There are also Slender lorises, endangered birds, water birds, insects like endangered spiders and snakes qualifying Lalbagh to be an urban forest, rightly protected legally by Park Preservation Act. It cannot and should not be denotified at any cost.  Infact I have personally seen a Python slithering away from human presence inside Lalbagh. Lalbagh is a birders’ paradise. If the government decimates the trees, the wildlife including snakes slender lorris, jackals, etc will end up outside the Park; this will create human wildlife conflict quite literally overnight..

This is the eastern entrance of the Glass house in Lalbagh, in Bangalore. It is what gives Lalbagh a Heritage Tag. The glass house hosts the bianual flowr show organised  by the Horticulture Department every year. 


Lalbagh is a botanical garden not just a Park. It has biological specimen from far-away lands like Madagascar, Hawaii, and Colombia, Peru, Brazil and French Polynesia. Horticulture officers proudly say there are botanical specimen from every part of the globe in this botanical garden. These specimen have been imported legally by way of exemption granted through CITES and other Customs laws. Thus they cannot be classified as invasives. Exotics have been curated by specialised horticulturists. These specimen cannot be decimated no matter what the expediency.

In 1999 a small lake in Lalbagh’s south entrance Gate (called Siddapura Gate) was filled up with mud with the intention of denotifying that portion of the Protected Park.  The attempt shrink the Park by denotifying it and reconstructing the boundary wall was valiantly fought against and the park was preserved.  

Decimating Lalbagh’s green legacy for single user cars which will scrapped in a junk yard a decade from now is an unthinkable environmental crime.

Decimating Lalbagh constitutes an environmental crime.  

Don’t miss these films I have filmed in Lalbagh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO_-FTH4VUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkmKuwI1Oso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg1m-aUhCLI

Links:

Read more at: https://www.oneindia.com/bengaluru/bengaluru-tunnel-project-beneath-the-garden-city-engineers-build-hope-for-a-freer-flow-above-7899481.html

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