Town Panchayats, City Municipal Council to join the campaign

Mysore/Mysuru: After the proposal to install over 75 CCTV cameras all along the 43.5-km Ring Road failed to materialise, Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) will take up a four-day mass cleaning campaign of the Ring Road from Monday, Feb. 27.

To give some muscle to the MCC and stop people from dumping garbage on the Ring Road, the MCC had in 2021 proposed digital surveillance to instil fear among those who are throwing garbage. However, this plan did not take off.

The decision to launch a cleaning campaign was taken at a meeting of elected representatives and officers of the MCC yesterday that specifically discussed the debris dumping on the Ring Road. The meeting was chaired by MP Pratap Simha in the presence of Mayor Shivakumar, Deputy Mayor Dr. D. Roopa and MCC Commissioner G. Lakshmikantha Reddy.

Isolated places like the service roads of the Ring Road are the favourite spots for people and business establishments to dump garbage and construction debris. In the absence of a dedicated garbage dump, villagers of Belavatta, Sathagalli, Hinkal, Koorgali, Bogadi, Srirampura, Hosahundi, Hanchya, Alanahalli and Siddalingapura discard waste all along the Ring Road.

Construction waste, animal waste dumped

Heaps of garbage including construction waste and animal and poultry waste from slaughterhouses are discarded indiscriminately along the Ring Road. The favourite spaces for dumping include Deve Gowda Circle, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) Centre, Alanahalli Layout Circle, J.P. Nagar Ring Road and H.D. Kote Road.

The meeting observed that months ago, the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and the MCC had taken up cleaning campaigns as part of Dasara and International Day of Yoga. Though the dumping menace was controlled for some time, it is back again to haunt the residents. This comes despite warnings of criminal action against dumping.

The MP noted that waste is being dumped across 35 layouts of MUDA that come under the jurisdiction of Srirampura, Bogadi, Kadakola and Rammanahalli Town Panchayats and Hootagalli City Municipal Council (CMC). The plan is to involve the authorities of these Town Panchayats and CMC, Simha said.

“We thought that once the Ring Road lights start functioning, the indiscriminate waste dumping at midnight would stop. We were wrong as the dumping of waste at midnight has increased,”                         the MP noted.

Blame on MUDA, developers

Reacting to the dumping of waste, Hootagalli CMC Commissioner Narasimhaswamy said that over 35 private layouts have come up at Vijayanagar Fourth Stage and there are no basic amenities in these layouts. There is a legal hurdle to including these layouts under Hootagalli CMC.

“MUDA has not provided basic amenities like drinking water and drainage systems. In the absence of facilities, residents of these 35 layouts and also others are forced to dump waste along the Ring Road,” he said.

MP Simha reacted sharply to this and said that MUDA is duty-bound to hand over the layouts only after developing them and providing basic facilities. He asked the authorities to initiate disciplinary proceedings against those developers who have not provided basic amenities in their layouts and blacklist them.

The meeting also discussed the instances of burning waste dumped on the Ring Road which is posing a health hazard. “The waste burning has destroyed hundreds of trees that were planted some six years ago. The waste dumping and burning are a blot on a clean city and many tourists are complaining of an unhygienic atmosphere,” Pratap Simha told reporters after the meeting.

Corporator B.V. Manjunath, MCC Health Officer Dr. D.G. Nagaraju, Assistant Executive Engineer of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) Rajendrakumar and other officers were present.