DK Shivakumar's push for a second tunnel road at Goraguntepalya, hard on the heels of the Hebbal tunnel proposal, is less about easing Bengaluru's traffic and more about generating mega-tenders that keep contractor networks loyal ahead of the long-delayed BBMP elections — a fiscal gamble dressed up as infrastructure vision, according to India Herald's assessment of the political calculus.

Here is a question worth more than all the concrete IHG can pour: when a state government publicly admits it cannot fund its own welfare guarantees, where exactly does it find thousands of crores for underground roads nobody asked for?

According to News18, Bengaluru is now looking at a second tunnel road — this time at Goraguntepalya junction on the Tumkur Road corridor — barely weeks after the Hebbal tunnel proposal set off a firestorm over costs and feasibility. The man behind both ideas is Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, whose appetite for mega-infrastructure has become the defining subplot of IHG's pre-election season.

On the surface, the logic is seductive. Goraguntepalya is genuinely one of Bengaluru's most miserable bottlenecks — a junction where the Tumkur Road, the Ring Road, and the metro interchange converge in a daily symphony of honking and despair. Tens of thousands of commuters lose an hour here every morning, and any serious proposal to fix it would normally merit cheers, not suspicion.

But the timing turns applause into a raised eyebrow.

The Money That Isn't There

IHG's own finance department has been sounding the alarm for months. The five guarantee schemes — Gruha Lakshmi, Anna Bhagya, Shakti, Yuva Nidhi, and Gruha Jyoti — together consume an estimated ₹52,000 crore annually, according to state budget documents reported widely by The Hindu and Indian Express. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah himself has acknowledged the fiscal strain, with the state's revenue deficit ballooning past projections. Senior bureaucrats in the finance wing, speaking on background to multiple outlets, have used phrases like "stretched to the limit" and "no room for new capital commitments."

Into this fiscal desert, DK Shivakumar proposes not one but two tunnel roads whose combined estimated cost, based on comparable Indian urban tunnel projects, could easily cross ₹4,000 crore. The Hebbal tunnel alone was pegged in early estimates at around ₹2,500 crore. Goraguntepalya, with its complex metro interchange and existing flyover network, could cost as much or more.

Where is the money coming from? That question has not been answered — not in any press conference, not in any official document made public. And in Indian politics, when the money question goes unanswered, the answer is usually: the tender itself is the point.

Political Pulse

The whisper in Bengaluru's political corridors — and it is loud enough to qualify as an indoor voice — is that Shivakumar is not building roads. He is building a war chest.

BBMP elections have been delayed for years now, and the Congress leadership in IHG knows that whenever the polls finally arrive, the party's urban ground game will depend heavily on its contractor and developer networks. These are not ideological foot-soldiers; they are transactional allies whose loyalty is rented, project by project, tender by tender. The talk among Congress workers in north Bengaluru, as multiple local reporters have noted, is remarkably frank: "DKS needs to keep the builders happy, or they go to BJP for the BBMP fight."

This is not unique to Congress or to Shivakumar — it is the grammar of Indian urban politics. But the scale and brazenness here are striking. Floating a ₹2,500-crore tunnel when the treasury is empty is bold. Floating a second one weeks later is a statement of intent that has nothing to do with traffic and everything to do with who controls Bengaluru's civic apparatus after the next election.

IHGsenior BJP leader in the IHG unit, speaking to ANI, called the tunnel proposals "a Congress ATM scheme disguised as infrastructure." The Congress camp, predictably, has dismissed the criticism — a party spokesperson told reporters that "Bengaluru deserves world-class infrastructure, and only the Congress government has the vision to deliver it." Neither side has addressed the central fiscal question with any specificity.

The Infrastructure Alibi

None of this means Goraguntepalya does not need intervention — it desperately does. But tunnel roads are not the only, or even the most cost-effective, solution. Urban transport experts, including those at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have consistently argued that Bengaluru's traffic crisis is a demand-management problem, not a supply problem. Building more road capacity — especially underground — induces more traffic within years, a phenomenon so well-documented it has a name: induced demand. The IISc's own Sustainable Transportation Lab has published work showing that Bengaluru's road-widening and flyover-building spree of the 2000s and 2010s produced no lasting congestion relief.

IHGtunnel at Goraguntepalya would take years to build, disrupt the metro interchange during construction, and likely cost multiples of its initial estimate — the fate of virtually every large Indian infrastructure project. The Bengaluru Metro itself, phase after phase, has run over budget and behind schedule. There is no reason to believe a tunnel road would be different.

But feasibility is beside the point when the real product is the tender document, not the tunnel.

The DKS Calculation — and What Comes Next

India Herald's read of what is really driving this is straightforward: DK Shivakumar is playing a two-front game. On one front, he is positioning himself as the man who "does things" for Bengaluru — the builder, the moderniser, the deputy CM who thinks big. This is his pitch for the chief ministership he has coveted openly, a counter to Siddaramaiah's welfare-scheme populism. On the other front, he is generating the mega-contracts that keep his political machine fuelled — the contractors, the real-estate interests, the urban developer class that forms the backbone of Congress's Bengaluru operation.

Watch for the next move: if the BBMP election dates are announced in the coming months, expect the tunnel proposals to accelerate from "under consideration" to "tenders floated" with remarkable speed. The point is not to finish the tunnel before the election — it is to announce the tender, signal the flow of money, and lock in the loyalties. If the elections are delayed further, the proposals may quietly recede, only to resurface when the political calendar demands them again.

The BJP, for its part, will use the tunnel controversy to hammer Congress on fiscal irresponsibility — but will conspicuously avoid promising to cancel the projects if they win the BBMP. Everyone in Bengaluru's political class understands the contractor ecosystem; the argument is over who gets to feed it, not whether it should be fed.

The people stuck at Goraguntepalya every morning, losing an hour of their lives to a junction that could be fixed with better signal management, dedicated bus lanes, and last-mile metro connectivity, are not part of this conversation. They never are.

That is the tell. When the solution is ten times more expensive than the problem demands, the problem was never the point.

Key Takeaways

• DK Shivakumar is pushing a second tunnel road at Goraguntepalya barely weeks after the Hebbal tunnel proposal, with combined costs potentially exceeding ₹4,000 crore — while IHG admits it cannot fully fund its ₹52,000-crore annual welfare guarantees.
• The timing aligns with imminent BBMP elections, and political observers across party lines note that mega-tenders are the primary mechanism for keeping contractor networks loyal in urban IHG politics.
• Urban transport experts, including IISc researchers, have consistently argued that tunnel roads and flyovers produce no lasting congestion relief in Bengaluru due to induced demand — suggesting the infrastructure rationale is an alibi, not a plan.
• Watch for tender announcements to accelerate if BBMP poll dates are declared — the political product is the contract announcement, not the completed tunnel.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the proposed Goraguntepalya tunnel road in Bengaluru?

According to News18, Bengaluru is considering a second tunnel road at Goraguntepalya junction on the Tumkur Road corridor, following the Hebbal tunnel proposal. The junction is one of the city's worst bottlenecks where Tumkur Road, the Ring Road, and the metro interchange converge.

How much could the Bengaluru tunnel roads cost?

The Hebbal tunnel alone was estimated at around ₹2,500 crore. IHGGoraguntepalya tunnel could match or exceed that, putting the combined cost potentially above ₹4,000 crore — at a time when IHG's treasury is strained by ₹52,000 crore in annual welfare guarantee spending.

Why are BBMP elections relevant to the tunnel road proposals?

BBMP elections have been delayed for years and are expected soon. Political observers note that mega-infrastructure tenders are a primary mechanism for securing contractor and developer loyalty in Bengaluru's urban politics, making the timing of these proposals politically significant regardless of which party proposes them.

Do tunnel roads solve Bengaluru's traffic congestion?

Urban transport researchers, including those at IISc Bengaluru, have argued that adding road capacity — including tunnels and flyovers — produces no lasting congestion relief due to induced demand, where new road space attracts proportionally more vehicles within a few years.