Bengaluru: Even as the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) plans to hold private landowners accountable for maintaining vacant sites and recover cleanup costs from defaulters, Bengaluru North City Corporation’s experience suggests the biggest challenge may not be clearing garbage and overgrowth, but identifying the owners themselves.Over the past year, the corporation identified 267 vacant plots after receiving repeated complaints through the commissioner’s phone-in programme and representations from resident welfare associations. Of these, 92 sites have been cleared, including several large and long-neglected properties that had turned into dumping grounds.Among the major sites taken up was a 34-acre vacant property in Kavalbyrasandra from which large quantities of garbage were removed before the area was barricaded. Another challenging site was a litigated property in Pulakeshinagar. Officials said several other plots were covered with thick vegetation, construction debris and household waste.The clean-up operations involved pourakarmikas, hired labour and earth-moving equipment depending on the size of the site. Officials said fixing accountability after the cleanup proved far more difficult.Who pays for cleanup?Having cleared 92 private vacant plots across its jurisdiction, BNCC is now grappling with a question that could determine the success of GBA’s citywide initiative — who should foot the bill? The corporation has shared details of the cleaned plots with the revenue department to help trace ownership records and identify those responsible for maintaining the land.Officials said the challenge lies not in calculating the cleanup cost, but in identifying the owners themselves. In several cases, ownership details were either unavailable in municipal records, linked to disputed properties or belonged to absentee owners. “When we cleaned the sites, we thought owners would come forward. Nobody turned up. In several cases, even local associations could not identify the owners,” said Pommala Sunil Kumar, BNCC commissioner.The corporation is now exploring ways to attach the cleanup charges to the property rather than an individual owner, ensuring that the liability remains with the land irrespective of ownership disputes. “In disputed cases, somebody’s name will still be associated with the property. The idea is to eventually attach the liability to the property itself,” he said.Officials believe the exercise offers an early glimpse into the challenges GBA could face as it rolls out the policy across Bengaluru. GBA officials hope that chief minister DK Shivakumar’s recent warning of taking back sites allotted by housing societies, if sites are not maintained or houses are not constructed, might force some owners to pay attention to cleanliness.
