On Sunday (February 12), Bharat Rashtriya Samiti (BRS) leader Y Sathish Reddy stirred the hornet’s nest after he falsely claimed that the 10-lane Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway had been turned into 6 lanes.
He alleged that the reduction in lanes was done by the Centre government to receive a 40% commission (kickback) from the construction of the project. “So, 10-lane expressway turned into a 6-lane after removing 40% commission? #40PercentSarkar,” he claimed.
In another tweet, Y Sathish Reddy cast aspersions on the integrity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged that the latter endorsed the so-called ‘40% commission’ scheme. The archive of his tweet can be accessed here.
Needless to say, the BRS leader did not furnish any evidence to back his claims of the supposed receipt of kickbacks. In a bid to mislead the people, he posted a picture of one portion of the expressway and claimed that it has ‘miraculously’ shrunk to 6 lanes from 10 lanes.
However, a drone view of the Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway exposes the bluff of Y Sathish Reddy. As evident from pictures posted by ‘Droneman’ on Twitter, the Expressway consists of a 6-lane main carriageway and 4 lanes (2 on each side of the carriage) to cater to the needs of the villages.
The carriageway will be used to channelise the highway traffic. It is designed to reduce fuel consumption and reduce travel time between Bengaluru and Mysuru to 1 hour and 20 minutes.
By carefully not including Lanes 1,2, 9, and 10, the BRS leader attempted to give the impression that four lanes of the 10-lane expressway were not built to save money and receive a commission from the contractors.
It must be mentioned that Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari made it clear last month about the specific utility of the lanes. Despite being well aware of it, Y Sathish Reddy tried to score political brownies at the expense of the Union government.