At last, it’s a NICE concrete road

Company officials insist it has nothing to do with allegation that the original agreement had specified a concrete road

Seventeen years after the project was launched, a nine-kilometre stretch of Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) has been converted from a bitumen road to white concrete. BMIC is the outcome of an agreement between the state government and Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE). 

The concrete segment begins near PESIT College on Outer Ring Road and ends at the NICE office near Somapura village (Clover Junction). 

This development is significant because of a case filed in 2012 in the Lokayukta court alleging, among other things, that the original agreement specified a concrete road. Instead, the petitioner pointed out, toll is being collected for a tar road. 

The Lokayukta court ordered attachment of toll collected for the previous two years and an investigation into the alleged irregularities. The order was stayed by the high court earlier this year.

Last month, the complainant publicly offered Rs 1 crore to anyone who could prove that they had paid toll to NICE to travel on concrete road.

NICE officials insisted that the new concrete stretch has nothing to do with the case in the Lokayukta court. Manjunath Nayak, vice-president, public relations, said, “From day one, BMIC was to be a concrete road. But as per our contract, we have to build a concrete road after the first 62 kilometres. We had to first build bitument road on a virgin stretch and wait for it to settle down. We have high embankments and these have to settle down. If concrete is laid in the first instance itself, the road would be uneven. The concrete road is the final version of BMIC."

The stretch begins near PESIT College on Outer Ring Road and ends at the NICE office near Somapura village