The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) aims to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by planting 15 lakh saplings in 12 hours on June 27 to mark Kempe Gowda Jayanti. 

The earlier record was held by Indore for planting 12.4 lakh saplings in 24 hours, BDA sources said. 

Miyawaki style

BDA chairman N.A. Haris, speaking at an editor’s roundtable in the city on Friday (June 19), said that this programme will create Miyawaki-style urban forests on 244 acres of BDA land in Nadaprabhu Kempe Gowda Layout (NPKL), Dr. K. Shivaram Karanth Layout and Banashankari VI Stage. “The effort to plant 15 lakh saplings is huge and we need 50,000 volunteers that day who will plant 30 saplings each to achieve the target,” he said, appealing for volunteers to join BDA. 

He further said that NGOs and organisations will be partnered with to maintain patches of this forest for three years. “A group needs to adopt at least one acre of forest patch. It will have nearly 7,500 to 8,000 saplings. To maintain these, you need at least a group of 300 people,” BDA Commissioner P. Manivannan said, adding this will ensure these saplings survive. 

Native and exotic

BDA will plant 12.5 lakh trees, both native and exotic species, and 2.5 lakh shrubs, BDA officials said. Of these, 40% of the trees will be top canopy trees, 40% mid canopy trees and the rest 20% shrubs, as per the Miyawaki technique. 

The 10-km long Major Arterial Road (MAR) in NPKL will be lined with various flowering trees of the Tabebuia family to create a corridor of serial blossoming. MAR, to be named after former Congress Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, will also be inaugurated on June 27.

BDA to go vertical in new layouts 

Mr. Haris said that the authority would opt for vertical development in the upcoming layouts. BDA plans to develop 11 layouts along the Peripheral Ring Road, where it now wants to break away from plot development and instead go for vertical development. 

Mr. Manivannan said that due to high costs of land acquisition, developing layouts is fast becoming unviable. 

BDA to push for being LPA for GBA area as well

Mr. Haris said that the authority was pushing for it to be made the Local Planning Authority (LPA) of the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) area as well, like it was before. 

Under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, GBA was made the LPA for its area, while BDA will be the LPA for the area beyond GBA but within the Bengaluru Metropolitan Area. This means there will be two master plans for the region and both agencies have begun work on the same. “Ideally, there should be only one master plan for the region. Two master plans may create confusion. I have appealed to the Chief Minister to make BDA the LPA for the entire BMA. It is under discussion now,” he said.