Discussion clears citizens' doubt about ward committees

Over 300 citizens on Tuesday discussed about the upcoming ward committee meetings at a public roundtable, an event organised by Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB).

The mayor Gangambike Mallikarjun, BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad, and BBMP ruling party leader M Shivaraju cleared people's doubts.

Recently, N Manjunath Prasad had directed all the 198 wards to conduct ward committee meetings on the first Saturday of every month.

At the event, Manjunath Prasad said: “According to the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Act, the local governing body should form 10-member ward committees. The ward corporator will be the president of the committee.”

“The committee will have two members from the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, two from residents welfare association, three women and three members nominated by the corporators," he said.

When Geetha Menon from Stree Jagruti Samiti asked: “how we will get to know our ward committee members?”, Prasad said: “The list of committee members will be put up on the BBMP portal http://bbmp.gov.in/.”

Shashidhar, a resident questioned: “will the committee will include a representative from BWSSB, Bescom, BMTC, and other agencies?" To this Prasad said: “we will ask the junior level officials of the civic agencies concerned to take part in the meetings.”

The ward committee meeting is scheduled for the first Saturday of every month at 11.30 am at the designated place. The details regarding this will be put up on the notice boards of the ward offices and BangaloreOne centres. The meetings' proceedings will be put up on the BBMP website.

“The committee will have the power to supervise various civic issues like waste management, road development, street lights, parks, drainages and rajakaluve maintenance. The committee can access the fund released to the ward and get information about the fund used for the various developmental projects,” he added.