Did you wish 'Get Well Soon' to the BBMP?

In yet another case of inaction, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials were seen completely helpless and ineffective when a builder in the city decided to blatantly ignore its directives. While we write this, we are genuinely worried about the health of BBMP. What the builder did to them is simply NOT done! How could a builder simply take undue advantage of the seemingly ailing municipal corporation?

We feel for the people of Bengaluru and share their pain. We can only imagine the struggles the law-abiding citizens of this city face in the corridors of the BBMP. One where the high and mighty blatantly override the municipal corporation directives and commoners suffer. We were told that in our case, the builder is connected to some 'big-politician' and the local cops who witnessed our suffering offered this humble advice, "Nothing will happen. These people are very well connected. the BBMP will do nothing. No one will."

In all honesty, we also feel sorry for the BBMP officials. Therefore, we are willing to happily offer pro-bono counseling to the BBMP, to show their employees 'how to stand up for what's right?'. It's about time the mayor and the commissioner of BBMP stand up to protect the honour and sanctity of the corporation.

Now, our fight for justice has just begun. We will not have a bunch of sly real estate magnates put the lives of our colleagues and neighbours at risk. That why we're saying "#GetWellSoonBBMP". The mayor and the commissioner should expect postcards and flowers from our colleagues for the next 10-days. Although we hope that BBMP wakes up soon enough and acts against the erring builder. Let the people of Bengaluru know that no one is above the law.

If you too are a victim of BBMP's 'inability'; please do tweet using #GetWellSoonBBMP tagging the Mayor, Commissioner & @ibtimes_india and we will highlight your story.

 The Issue

Location: The India office of International Business Times. Time: 1:00 PM, November 4, 2017. The office building with around 200+ souls inside starts shaking. Earthquake! That was the first reaction. The 'aftershocks' just refused to stop. Soon, we realised that the epicentre for this 'quake' was the adjacent under construction building. The builder had decided to use heavy machinery to break the existing concrete structure (ruins of the old Pallavi theatre?) and do excavation work.

This, despite knowing that this could lead to structural damage and possible collapse of the nearby structures. But why should they care, right? After all, the said builder claims to have 15+ years of experience, 13.5 million sq ft of area developed, 54 international brands housed and what not! Obviously, with such 'money muscle', the BBMP is NO match. As for us lesser mortals, our lives clearly don't matter.

Complaints were filed with the BBMP, imploring the mayor that we were concerned about the possible loss of life. The mayor's office did send an assistant engineer to the spot. The said engineer issued an order asking the builder to stop the excavation work until an expert committee files its report. Barely five minutes after the engineer left the spot, the ground-shaking work was resumed. Trashing the BBMP directive.