Bengaluru, 10 Oct

Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge on Friday said that Bengaluru was having traffic issues because the city was growing, and stressed the need to solve it.

The Minister for Electronics, IT/BT, was speaking at the 'Mobility Symposium 2025' here.

He said that "75.5 per cent of Bengaluru's population is a working population, it is a young population, we are number 4 globally."

"It's a good problem to have, if you ask me. A lot of people say that Bengaluru has a lot of traffic issues. Yes, we are having traffic issues because we are growing. But, we need to solve it as well," Kharge said.

"As a government, we cannot say that, look, we are growing and that's why we should not be solving. It's a good problem to have."

Noting that last year close to 77.92 million square feet of office space was sold to global capability centres in the top seven cities, and 47 per cent of that was in Bengaluru alone, Kharge said, "Just this year, till September, we have sold close to 14.5 million square ft for global capability centres alone. I'm not talking about other office spaces."

"This is the growth we are having. We absorb the highest number of migrants because we are creating jobs here. We have close to 1.2 crore vehicles registered -- about 82 lakh two-wheelers and 25 lakh four-wheelers. Just last year, we added 7 lakh vehicles in the city. In August, we added 58,913 vehicles," he said.

Pointing out that there are only two things that can be done -- ban the vehicle registration or improve the infrastructure, the Minister said, "I think the latter one is the better thing to do."

"Why I'm telling these numbers is, that's how fast we are growing. Every powerful city like Bengaluru has this problem," he said, stressing the need to do more to address the issue, especially by the government.

The minister's statement came in the backdrop of the state government drawing criticism for the poor state of roads and worsening traffic conditions in the city.

Several prominent people, including industry veterans in Bengaluru like former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai and Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, had recently urged the state government to immediately intervene.

The outrage against the condition of roads gained momentum following the online trucking platform BlackBuck last month to move the company out of its current location at Bellandur on Bengaluru's Outer Ring Road (ORR), citing commuting and road infrastructure issues.