Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has resolved 64% of the 7,410 grievances registered through its open-house meetings since the initiative began on July 3, 2025, the authority said at its 100th session on Thursday. The meetings have become a direct channel for housing applicants and site allottees to raise long-pending cases before senior officials.
The 100th open-house meeting was chaired by BDA chairperson NA Haris in the presence of commissioner P Manivannan. Citizens attending the session welcomed the mechanism, particularly for cases involving disputed land, delayed allotments and alternative sites.
Haris described the meetings as a milestone in the authority’s move towards citizen-centric governance. He said citizens could raise grievances directly before BDA officials, who were required to attend with relevant files and records. According to him, the process ensured that complaints were heard, tracked and pursued within defined timelines.
The system has been supplemented by BDA Guarantee, under which complaints are digitised, assigned unique grievance identification numbers and monitored for action. The authority has prescribed indicative redressal timelines of seven days for urgent grievances, 30 days for general complaints and 100 days for grievances raised during open-house meetings.
Apart from the open-house registrations, BDA said it had received 69,686 queries through inbound calls and another 3,630 through WhatsApp. These figures indicate the volume of citizen contact the authority is handling beyond physical meetings, although the BDA did not provide a separate resolution rate for those channels.
Several cases raised at the 100th meeting involved applicants who had waited years for clarity on site allotments. Nagaraj, 70, said he received an allotment in Arkavathy Layout in 2026 after pursuing the matter for 20 years and making eight attempts. Formalities were subsequently delayed because of litigation relating to the land. Although BDA offered him an alternative site, he declined it because he had specifically applied for Arkavathy Layout.
Pushpalatha, 74, and her husband said they had applied for a plot in Arkavathy Layout 22 years ago. After approaching the authority recently, an official helped them secure an alternative site in Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout. Another elderly couple from Padmanabhanagar said they had been allotted a 30×40 site in Arkavathy Layout in 2006 and registered it in 2007, but later found that the land was disputed.
Following the Justice K N Keshavanarayana Committee report, the couple said they were allotted a site in Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout. They also said they were asked to pay Rs 20,000 in charges for the alternative allotment despite having previously paid taxes and other fees. According to the couple, Haris orally agreed to adjust the amount against future tax payments.
Another beneficiary, Prasad, said his original 40×60 site allotment was cancelled. The BDA subsequently offered him a 30×40 site and agreed to refund the difference in the amount paid. He said the open-house system had accelerated the process significantly.
The BDA’s next steps involve continuing the open-house meetings and tracking complaints through the digitised BDA Guarantee system within the authority’s prescribed timelines.
