Bengaluru/ New Delhi, 5 Dec

Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya lashed out at the Congress government a day after the State Cabinet approved a short twin-tunnel road and an elevated corridor between the Hebbal flyover and Mekhri Circle for Rs 2,215.

The government is “obsessed with making tunnels,” Surya wrote on X on Friday. He said the State’s Finance Department had “specifically suggested that a surface road could be built at one tenth of the expenditure”.

He claimed that the department that identified several issues in the project, including conflicts in integration and utility conflict between the north to south tunnel and the short tunnel, ambiguity in the funding mechanism, and a lack of supporting evidence from experts.

“Yet, the Siddaramaiah government is pushing ahead with this project,” he said. “The arbitrary decision making of the Congress is turning governance into an unpredictable process that lacks transparency and accountability.”

“Under the Congress government, urban planning and development has become a budget maximisation affair,” he remarked.

The Cabinet had approved the construction of a 2.27km tunnel road on Thursday. Notably, the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) will acquire land from the Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra (GKVK) campus for the project.