BANGALORE: After the Government repeatedly turned down a private college’s plea to asphalt a mud road even after some students met with a near fatal accident, the college asphalted the road and is now ready for use.The near-fatal incident in 2000 was a turning point for the authorities of Acharya College at Soldevanahalli and they decided to use their own resources to lay a 2.56 km metal road up to Hesarghatta Main road.They realised that it would also provide access to six villages in the vicinity. Earlier, they were using a narrow 8 km mud road. All attempts to make it a pucca road over the years failed.Chairman of Acharya Institutes B Premnath Reddy says, “One day our college bus met with an accident after the driver lost control. The vehicle hit a house.Luckily, the occupants of the house and the students escaped with minor injuries.”Following the incident, he called for a meeting with local leaders and land-owners from the six villages. “All of them agreed to give their land for road construction. We spent Rs 60 lakh for land acquisition alone,” he says.But, all was not smooth sailing as he had to deal with a court case alleging coercion in selling land and escalating costs of construction which touched Rs 6 crore.While the institution claims that there has been no helps from the local MLAs, but they maintain that their fun allotment does not allow scope for development of every road in their constituency.However, MLC R V Venkatesh gave Rs 25,000 from his local area development fund towards construction of the road.“From the Institution side, along with the maintenance of road and drainage, we have planted greenery on both the sides of road. We are also maintaining the road. We have also installed the street lights and pay the bill for the same,” said Prem.
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