Samreen Farooqui

RoundGlass Sustain.
Hit and Run Films.

Views and retweets are personal.

[Civic Opposition of India @CivicOp_india]

To
The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka
Siddaramaiah
Vidhana Soudha
Bengaluru
@CMofKarnataka @osd_cmkarnataka @siddaramaiah

Subject: An urgent appeal to halt the tunnel road project and protect Bengaluru from irreversible urban harm

Respected Chief Minister Sir,

We write to you on behalf of Civic Opposition of India, a citizen-led public platform working on issues of urban governance, mobility, and environmental accountability. This letter is a sincere and urgent appeal to pause and reconsider the proposed tunnel road project in Bengaluru before the city is pushed further into irreversible ecological and financial damage.

Bengaluru is not facing a shortage of roads. It is facing a collapse of planning, public transport neglect, and institutional accountability. The tunnel road proposal, projected to cost tens of thousands of crores of public money, attempts to treat congestion as an engineering problem rather than a governance failure. History shows that such solutions do not reduce traffic. They merely relocate it, deeper and more expensively.

Around the world, cities that once embraced urban highways and tunnels are now dismantling them at enormous cost, having learnt that induced demand overwhelms every new lane, flyover, or tunnel. Bengaluru risks repeating these mistakes at a scale the city can neither afford nor survive.

Recent experience in Bengaluru validates this concern. The newly constructed loop at the Hebbal flyover, instead of easing congestion, has merely shifted traffic to the next junction, exactly the pattern predicted by transport experts. This real-time evidence underscores that building more road capacity for cars does not solve congestion; it merely relocates it and deepens the city’s infrastructure distress.

Why this project alarms citizens
1. It diverts scarce public money from real solutions
At a time when Bengaluru struggles with broken footpaths, unsafe streets, poor bus frequency, unfinished suburban rail, and chronic last-mile gaps, committing massive funds to tunnels prioritizes private vehicles over the daily commuter. This is neither equitable nor sustainable.

2. It poses serious environmental and hydrological risks
Large-scale underground construction in a city already suffering from groundwater depletion and flooding raises grave concerns. Tunnelling threatens aquifers, destabilizes soil layers, and increases long-term flood risk, especially in a city whose natural drainage systems and lakes are already compromised.

3. It weakens democratic and planning processes
Projects of this magnitude demand transparent studies, independent peer review, and genuine public consultation. Citizens increasingly feel that decisions are being fast-tracked while dissenting voices, urban experts, and resident groups are treated as obstacles rather than stakeholders.

4. It locks Bengaluru into a car-centric future
Every rupee spent on tunnels is a rupee not spent on buses, metro integration, suburban rail, cycling infrastructure, and walkable streets. Tunnel roads institutionalize inequality by privileging car owners while the majority continue to endure unreliable, unsafe, and overcrowded public transport.

The larger truth
Bengaluru’s traffic problem cannot be solved underground. It must be solved at the surface, where people live, walk, cycle, and commute daily. Cities are not saved by hiding cars beneath them. They are saved by reducing car dependence altogether.

This city once led India in innovation and forward thinking. Today, it risks becoming a case study in how not to plan a metropolis. Citizens are not opposing development. We are opposing misdirected development that mortgages the city’s future for short-term optics.

What we respectfully ask
We urge your government to:
1. Immediately pause the tunnel road project and place all related studies, contracts, and feasibility reports in the public domain.
2. Constitute an independent urban mobility and environment review panel, including transport planners, hydrologists, climate experts, and citizen representatives.
3. Redirect priority and funding to public transport, especially BMTC expansion, suburban rail acceleration, last-mile connectivity, and safe pedestrian infrastructure.
4. Adopt a long-term mobility vision that reduces private vehicle dependence rather than accommodating its unchecked growth.

A citizen’s appeal
Chief Minister Sir, Bengaluru does not need grand underground experiments. It needs honest governance, people-first mobility, and the courage to say no to projects that look impressive but harm the city quietly and permanently.

We request your personal intervention to ensure that Bengaluru’s future is shaped by wisdom, not by inertia or pressure from vested interests. This decision will define how history remembers this phase of the city’s leadership.

Yours sincerely,
Civic Opposition of India
Citizen-led platform for urban governance and public accountability

[Sairam Krishnan @_sairamkrishnan]

I have been thinking about this for a while. After my sister graduated, she had about 6 months to join TCS. She and my father set about rearranging all our family photographs in sequential albums. These were over 35 years of Dad's Kodaks and later digital pictures. Took them a long time, but these are favourite objects of mine, family heirlooms now. You can literally see us growing up, you can see our family's movements: Delhi and Shillong and Jamnagar and Thanjavur and back home in Pondy.

My point: In a world which has monetized, or wants to monetize every activity, which wants to put a value on every interest and hobby, which thinks you are wasting time if something is not of immediate monetary value, we need to go back to personal projects for their own sake. That give joy to no one except us. That have no value except that they exist. Our lives, and minds, will be so much better.

[Sumit Dookia @sumitdookia]

Last night, we lost our flag bearer of the #GIB Community Conservation Program, in a fatal road accident. Even up to the last breath, he was with an anti-poaching patrolling team. @RadheBishnoi__ you gone too early my boy. A true martyr💐🙏

[Sarayu Pani @sarayupani]

We absorbed (at the peak) about 150,000 Tibetan refugees when we were a much poorer country without feeling the pinch. Their children and grandchildren have roots in both nations now. Some have emigrated further and the number has reduced over time.

This idea that we are threatened by some of the poorest refugees in the world only lands if you are trapped in the consistent cycle of paranoia and aggression promoted by Hindutva.

[S lrfan Habib एस इरफान हबीब عرفان حبئب @irfhabib]

The iconic Karachi Bakery in Hyderabad is having tough time to prove that its founder is an Indian. A migrant from Karachi who founded it in 1950s. There are many others who do this to keep their emotional bonds alive. This madness should stop.

[Makepeace Sitlhou @makesyoucakes]

Whether Manipur or Operation Sindoor, always read Urvashi Butalia’s seminal work - The Other Side of Silence - on how and why women’s bodies are viewed as instruments leading to the honor of men, making them targets (or bait) in conflicts driven by nationalist fervor.

[Nikhil Taneja @tanejamainhoon]

There's a video of a child who lost his father being asked questions by the media. With a hundred microphones in front of him. There is no such video of any questions being posed to those who were accountable for the safety of our citizens. This, in a nutshell, is the state of Indian media today.

Where a grieving child is asked more questions than those in power.

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

It's a massacre of green cover at Kancha Gachibowli as Telangana government pushes to auction 400 acres of land in University of Hyderabad.

What two days of roaring earth movers, bulldozers have left behind.

Students of UoH were detained while protesting against this.

[Bahar Dutt @bahardutt]

Students are calling out #telangana govt to save 400 acres of kancha Gachibowli rich in biodiversity being flattened for an industrial project @SaveCityForests
Why not wait for the Court hearing before ordering the JCBs ?

[Rumi @Rumi_Quote]

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment."

[ParanjoyGuhaThakurta @paranjoygt]

The legacy of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud - this is being widely circulated on the social media: "I served the country with utmost dedication, and I am anxious about how history will remember me," said CJI D.Y. Chandrachud"

Yes... CJI Chandrachud, you will be remembered in history, but for these reasons:

For co-writing / co-authoring the Babri Masjid judgment, and then not having the courage to sign the judgment.

For declaring electoral bonds illegal and then ensuring that neither the money was recovered nor anyone was punished.

For calling the Chandigarh election officer a criminal and then taking no action against him.

For declaring the Shinde/Fadnavis/Ajit Pawar government illegal, declaring the governor's actions illegal, and then allowing the same government to continue for the remainder of its term without taking any concrete decision. Sending the matter back to the illegal speaker and allowing him to make illegal decisions.

Instead of asking Adani Enterprises to sue Hindenburg in U.S. courts, you made Hindenburg Research a party to the investigation, and then, based on your 'expert' panel's final report, considered the Adani Enterprises as clean, rather than demanding an investigation of Hindenburg's allegations by a team of 'experts'.

For shielding yourself on the constitutional validity of the removal of Article 370 and then ruling that the decision was appropriate, overlooking the fact that it happened when the state assembly (a legal entity that should have been consulted) was suspended and under President's rule... leading to an odd situation where the President of India consulted with the President of India to decide that Article 370 should be abrogated.

You will also be remembered for allowing young Muslims like Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, and Gulfisha Fatima to remain in jail, ruining their youth. They are repeatedly being denied bail because they are neither rich nor powerful but simply because they are Muslims, fighting for the rights of Muslims.

You will be remembered for letting the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case rot in jail, for the death of Father Stan Swamy, and ultimately for the death of Professor G.N. Saibaba. Even though credible forensic evidence showed that the entire case was false, based on fabricated evidence by the police and politicians.

These are some of the legacies you are leaving behind. In the end, opinions may differ on whether you did anything good for the judiciary or completely failed in it.

Yes, before leaving, you did remove the blindfold from the eyes of the Goddess of Justice. Justice used to be blind, but now it will see who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor... and "justice" will be done accordingly. You will also be remembered for this new tradition.

But you did not honor the old tradition of the judiciary. You truly broke the practice of delivering justice according to the spirit of the Constitution. You did not decide the Babri Masjid case based on evidence but based on devotion to God and a direct connection with God, believing that God showed you the right path.

CJI Chandrachud, you will be remembered for all these reasons and for the fact that you flattered to deceive.

These are now part of history, which cannot be changed, like water that has flowed in the Ganges. Remember that history will not be kind to you.

And yes... you will also be remembered for performing a puja with the Prime Minister at a private ceremony, with a cameraman accompanying you.

[CPI (M) @cpimspeak]

Red Salute to Comrade #SitaramYechury!

[Ravi Jambhekar | Ecologist | Illustrator @RaviJambhekar]

This illustration highlights some of the spectacular species we get to see in Bengaluru. Example the Slender Loris in the IISC campus, the Egyptian Vulture soaring over the UB City mall and the other overlooked butterflies, dragonflies and migratory bird species.

#Biodiversity

[Dr. Sylvia Karpagam @sakie339]

Unless we acknowledge that the men who rape..::

Are the same men who lynch….

We will not solve either problem.

[Gregor Shamsa @gulaab_ali_]

Jamia. AMU

[Penguin Books USA @penguinusa]

Just saw a tote bag that says “I am not the same person I was one book ago” 🥹

[zenrainman @zenrainman]

The three trees well

[Anna MM Vetticad @annavetticad]

A strange behavioural phenomenon was noticed in #Parliament this week. For the first time in post-Independence history, a man and the answer to his question were seen shaking hands.

In the picture:
Right: #NarendraModi
Left: The answer to Narendra's question, "Kaun Rahul?"

[PunsterX @PunsterX]

"The joke that Modi made to his sychophantic interviewers who were all in splits about it, was 'Kaun Rahul?'

I think that's the last joke that's ever going to be made about Rahul Gandhi."

- Naseeruddin Shah