Driving in Bengaluru city may not be anyone’s idea of fun or even relaxation. But there is a road in its suburbs that promises an out-of-India driving experience.

On this road, access is only through tolled exit and entry ramps, which means no pedestrian or cyclist will suddenly dart across. A large, grassy median and an emergency lane at regular intervals on the left would remind Bengaluru’s techies of tree-lined parkways in the United States of America.

The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMICP), better known as NICE Road, after its promoter Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises, was originally intended to make driving from Bengaluru to Mysuru a breeze. Thirty years after the project was conceived, however, NICE Road remains just a link road between the IT & ITES corridor in the southeast parts of the city and the industrial corridor in the southwest, not a highway connecting two major cities in Karnataka that are 140-km apart.

Now, two wheelers have been banned in the night. Recent fatal crashes involving speeding vehicles, hike in the toll fee, and changes in speed limits tell a story of how NICE road never fulfilled its original promises.

Garden city’s aspirational road

NICE Road was a pet project of Deve Gowda who later became its chief detractor too. In 1995, a year before he became Prime Minister, Mr Gowda signed an agreement as Chief Minister of Karnataka with US-based Ashok Kheny, the head of SAB Engineering and Construction, on constructing the road. A framework agreement in 1997 envisioned a world-class infrastructure developing around NICE Road. Besides the expressway, there were to be a ring road and a link road with multiple entry and exit points. There were to be five new townships along the way.

The ring road was to connect the crucial Bengaluru-Chennai National Highway 48, Bengaluru -Mumbai National Highway 4 and the Bengaluru-Mysuru National Highway 275 (formerly State Highway 17), and hence take the load off the garden city’s roads that were already seeing chock-a-block traffic.

In the involvement of a private player, in conception and design, as well as in having tolled ramp access, NICE Road was far ahead of its time. It was an era when national highways were poorly laid and maintained, and the Private-Public-Partnership concept was still being debated.

The catch was that, to bring the vision into reality, some 20,000 acres, including 7,000 acres for road work and about 13,000 acres for the townships, needed to be acquired, mostly from farmers. Farmers owning fertile irrigated agriculture land became restive and opposed the project since they feared loss of land and livelihood. They flagged poor compensation for giving up what they valued most.

Controversies over land acquisition

As the process of land acquisition commenced, NICE was accused of conniving with state government officials to acquire land in excess. Many asked what was the need for the project of this scale when the existing SH 17 could be upgraded. Environment activists charged the project would cause much harm.

Mr. Gowda, who had signed the initial agreement, revised his stance. He accused NICE of acquiring some 11,600 acres of land in excess and said there were several deviations from the original framework agreement.

Mr. Gowda staged protests, wrote letters to prime ministers and took the matter to court. Litigation followed – in lower judiciary, High Courts and the Supreme Court. NICE won many of the cases. It also lost some recent ones. A 2020 verdict of the apex court held that the company can use land for housing projects only at the designated townships as per the framework agreement, not at intersections near Bengaluru city.

The Janata Dal (Secular), the regional party helmed by Mr. Gowda that has a large support base in Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara and Mandya districts where the proposed road passes through, is opposing the project in its current form. In parallel, the State government upgraded the State Highway 17 to Mysuru into a four-lane road in 2004-2005. Later, SH 17 became NH 275 and subsequently upgraded into a six-lane expressway that was inaugurated in March 2023.

Meanwhile, NICE fell short in executing several provisions in the framework agreement such as in laying of concrete road. After much nudging, this happened.

In several stretches deemed dangerous, the company, in recent years, took up modification work. Rising toll fares have been a bone of contention too.

Meanwhile, NICE promoter Ashok Kheny jumped into electoral politics, became an MLA and later joined the Congress. In 2016, a legislature house committee headed by former Minister T. B. Jayachandra recommended a high-level probe by a national agency such as the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Enforcement Directorate into “large scale irregularities” in executing the project. It indicted NICE for violating the framework agreement, excessive land acquisition, levying toll without laying concrete road, as well as illegal mining.

Until today, NICE has been able to develop 41 km of the ring road in South Bengaluru and an 8.5-km link road that provides connectivity to the ring road from the city. A meagre 4 km has been developed as expressway towards Mysuru.

Time to wind up?

Even as the project stalled, the land NICE acquired especially near Bengaluru has become a veritable goldmine. A booming real estate market on both sides of NICE Road has led to several cases of land being “denotified” as no more needed for the road and being diverted for real estate development. A good part of the land is also in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) jurisdiction where land prices are already high.

When H. D. Kumaraswamy, son of Mr. Gowda, headed a JD (S)-BJP alliance in the State during 2006-2007, the government moved to undermine NICE Road project. It proposed a peripheral ring road (PRR) that would encircle Bengaluru and whose alignment was close to NICE road, serving as an alternative. He also came up with alternative townships, including one at Bidadi, about 30 km from Bengaluru, and very close to a township proposed by NICE.

The PRR has not been implemented yet. It too has run into farmers’ opposition and is plagued by high land acquisition costs. Currently, the state government is proposing to connect NICE road with the PRR and make a full circle around the city. Meanwhile, NICE has offered its fairly large median for Namma Metro project.

With the new six-lane, access-controlled expressway that has reduced the travel time between two cities from about three hours to ninety minutes, the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project has likely lost its relevance. There have been calls that the State government should formally put a full stop to the project.