New course for horses

Bangalore Race Course, an 85-acre prime landmark of the city and a familiar haunt for race horse owners like liquor baron Vijay Mallya and industrialist M.A.M. Ramaswamy, is now finally being turfed out.

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced this in the Assembly, saying that the government will not extend the race course’s lease beyond December 2009.

Bangalore Race Course

However, Congress legislator Roshan Baig wants it to be maintained as a lung space since the city is being choked with seven million people and almost three million vehicles.

PWD Minister C.M. Udasi, who has already hinted that the race course will be shunted out to the outskirts, says the Government wants to build underground parking lots there to ease parking and traffic woes.

Various state Governments over the past 20 years have mulled over shifting the race course, which was founded by four Britishers in the early part of the century on lands leased by the Maharaja of Mysore.

In the early 1980s, the then chief minister Ramakrishna Hegde wanted it to be relocated to the vicinity of the Jakkur flying school. However, successive governments dithered, with H.D. Kumaraswamy even dropping the idea.

Some BJP leaders like Ramachandra Gowda insist that all forms of gambling should be banned. A high-level committee comprising legal experts has also been scrutinising various judgements of the Supreme Court and the high courts relating to horse racing and betting.

Recently, a court classified horse racing as a sport while setting aside the ban on it in Tamil Nadu. Since the idea of shifting the race course has come from the horse’s mouth itself this time, Hegde’s long pending blueprint may just see the light of day