Today we witnessed the saddest day in our layout's existence. BBMP brought in JCBs and razed some portion of the clubhouse damaging a building that was visionary for the time it was built in (2000 or whereabouts) and stood for 23 years.
There are multiple layers to the story but the fault was solely with the residents getting too complacent with political assurances and connections and not taking adequate legal precautions to safeguard what was our crown jewel in many ways.
For many initial years, as a community we remained non-aligned to politics. While this had not helped, it didn't do us damage. This position had changed in the recent years. Some newer residents came in with clout (and arrogance attached to it), showed utter disrespect for existing rules and processes, others who also found the layout rules inconvenient joined them and eventually they all ended up in the committee with vested interests and their own agenda to serve and then decided just their mere presence was enough, and that complacence cost us really hard today.
Whether it is a Congress government taking revenge on a layout that has overly voted in the favour of BJP, or a BBMP trying to make this a poster punishment showing how they will serve justice, whether it is the builder trying to use this to take back the club house which is worth 100s of crores now, whether it is something else altogether, we ordinary citizens will never know but the debacle and the debris will be a sad reminder of today's events for a long time to come.
In the end, if they do end up opening the Rajakaluve from Goshala to the ORR (impacts properties all the way from Bagmane Tech Park to Bhagini on ORR), then I would still be happy for the turn of events today. But looks like just FC gate to FC back wall will be dug as a show and life will go on as usual. How that solves the Rajakluve issue in any way is an utter puzzle.
