‘We’ll work to restore the city beautiful’ TNN, Mar 23, 2010,

Short of promising the moon, the state unit of the Congress made all the positive noises on Monday. The party will make Bangalore one of the 20 most livable cities in the world, if voted to power.

“Bangalore has lost its formidable reputation worldwide, that it acquired during the tenure of the previous Congress governments. We will restore the city’s rightful place and make it completely slum-free,’’ KPCC president R V Deshpande said, after releasing the 15-point party’s manifesto for the BBMP polls.

Keeping in view the looming terror threat and recent Carlton Towers tragedy, the manifesto promises to start an Emergency Management Task Force (EMTF) and a Crisis Response Cell (CRC) under BBMP. While EMTF will deal with risk assessment and contingency planning in consultation with state and national security, CRC will be opened to look into the dangers of fire and other related issues in high-rise buildings.

The party also plans to build an integrated and accurate database of urban poor in Bangalore within a year, and introduce Geographic Information System (GIS) to keep a tab on all properties in Bangalore.If elected, the KPCC president said, Congress will take steps to introduce Unique Identification (UID) smart cards first to Bangalore’s slum-dwellers. The Congress will use public-private partnership models to extend the popular mid-day meal scheme programme introduced in schools, to elderly citizens, destitute, orphans and disabled persons.

“We also plan to introduce breakfast as an add-on scheme to the existing mid-day meal scheme in schools,’’ Deshpande added.The party assured that it will establish diagnostic, dialysis, dental and veterinary care centres in each zone, and introduce a special health insurance scheme for the urban poor, on the lines of the Yashaswini scheme.

On the proposed Akrama-Sakrama scheme, Deshpande said the Congress will re-introduce the scheme in a new form, based on scientific city management to benefit the middle-class and poor, rather than builders.