Bengaluru’s gridlocked roads might frustrate millions of commuters daily, but if you ask Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge, those endless jams are not a problem; they’re proof of progress.
Speaking at the India Innovation Summit Innoverge organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on October 10, Kharge argued, “Just to give you a perspective on what scale Bengaluru is growing — last year, India saw an unprecedented office space increase of around 72 million sq. ft. across the top seven cities, out of which 40% was in Bengaluru.”
“This year, till September, we have seen office space growth close to 14.5 million sq. ft. Then we say why Bengaluru has so much traffic... We are growing rapidly.”
Migration is driving the pressure
“Bengaluru’s population is increasing by 2.5% every year. The highest absorption of migration is happening here... that’s why we have infrastructural problems,” he said, and added, the congestion might require “slowly moving some functions or activities out of the city” to distribute the pressure more evenly across Karnataka.
Kharge later took to X (formerly Twitter) to double down on his stance, lamenting, “Bengaluru’s mobility story reflects both our success and our challenges. We’re one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with our GDP projected to grow at over 8.5% annually for the next decade,” he wrote.
“Today, Bengaluru has over 1.2 crore registered vehicles — nearly 82 lakh two-wheelers and 25 lakh cars. Last year alone, we added more than 7 lakh new vehicles to our roads. 58,913 new vehicles were registered in August 2025 alone. While, these numbers are a reflection of a growing city it is also an indication of why our roads are bursting at the seams,” he stated.
Kharge concluded by assuring that “the Government is solving these challenges collaboratively with think tanks and corporates.”
Interestingly, Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar compared Bengaluru’s traffic to that of London and Delhi, claiming the issue seems worse in Karnataka only because “media is free here, unlike in other states.”
