( 1 ) PETITIONER who is a retired chief engineer, has filed this petition as public interest litigation challenging the validity of agreement dated 3-4-1997, Annexure-A entered into between the government of karnataka and nandi infrastructure corridor enterprises limited, arrayed as respondents 1 and 2 (for short, 'respondents 1 and 2 respectively' ). the agreement has been executed by the secretary, public works department as an authorised officer of respondent 1 under article 299 (1) of the Constitution of india, for and on behalf of governor of karnataka. by this agreement the second respondent is authorised to construct and provide infrastructure corridor project between Bangalore and mysore ('the project", for short), consisting of residential, industrial plants, water treatment and other infrastructure developments as set out in the 4th para of the preamble in the said agreement. According to the petitioner the agreement entered into between respondents 1 and 2 is detrimental to the people of the area and against the Constitution of india and laws in force in the country. Illegality of the agreement being of such magnitude that if it is not challenged by the citizens of the state it would result in disastrous consequences affecting agriculture, horticulture, environment and pollution of the state. The people of the state are likely to be affected generally with the implementation of the project. the persons to be affected are so large in number that they cannot individually approach this court for relief. Therefore, the petition be entertained as public interest litigation.

( 2 ) TO appreciate the contentions raised between the parties and for its proper adjudication, it is necessary to refer to the factual matrix of the dispute as stated in the petition and derived from the official record produced before us in extenso. The same is: bangalore and Mysore are two very important cities of the state of Karnataka and are connected by existing Bangalore-mysore highway sh-17 which was built over 100 years ago. With the passage of time and modernisation of technology, the traffic on the roads has increased and heavy and fast moving vehicles have come in place of the slow moving traffic at that time. These two cities have been exposed to shock of industrialisation, heavy development and over-population. In order to meet the ends of the industry, and transportation, the state of Karnataka invited tenders for designing, constructing, maintaining and operating of an express highway between Bangalore and Mysore on 28th september, 1988. In response to the said advertisement only one bid was received with certain stringent conditions which were not acceptable to the government. The said conditions were:" (a) they proposed to form a new company to take up the project if awarded this work. (b) they requested government backing for guarantees, etc. (c) they wanted freedom of fixing the toll rates, consistent with the market conditions and freedom to revise the same from year to year according to the rise in cost of living index. They specified the lease period of approximately 60 years. (d) they requested 15 months time for verifying the project report before signing the formal contract. (e) the effect of cost push on account of quantity variation due to inadequacies in the present design and estimates would have to be settled before actual construction. (f) in case of difficulty encountered by them for acquiring land, the government should step in and acquire the land and handover the possession to them at the value provided in the project estimate. construction work will be started once the entire land is in their possession. (g) in the event of variation in traffic forecast as contained in the project report resulting in adverse effect on profitability, they should be given an opportunity to negotiate with the government before signing the final contract. (h) in addition to other points like safeguards, maintenance of law and Order, p

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