'Namma Bengaluru' award: For citizens, by citizens

Recipients of the annual award will be nominated by Bangaloreans

 Constituted under the aegis of the Namma Bengaluru Award (NBA) Trust, the awards will be given to people nominated by citizens for their work that has transformed Bangalore as a city over the years. Slated to be a yearly affair, the awards will be presented under two broad categories, public officials and private individuals/ organisations.
The awardees will be nominated by ordinary citizens. To ensure that only the deserving people and organisations receive the awards, the criteria will be set by the NBA trust, said Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde, one of eminent personalities who comprise the jury for the awards.

Twenty distinguished members of the society make the jury list, which include cricketer Javagal Srinath, noted writer G Siddlingaiah, cine actor Ramya, Member of Parliment, Justice Rama Jois and others.

MP and convener for the Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure Development (ABIDe), Rajeev Chandrashekar will be the chairman for the trust and the jury. “The trust will not comprise of any corporate entity. We are trying to get as many small stake holders as possible to contribute towards the corpus for the awards,” said Chandrashekar.
 While the members of the jury remained tight lipped on the corpus fund for the awards, sources said each of the awards will comprise of a cash prize worth Rs 2 lakh, with a total budgetary allocation of Rs 90 lakh for this year’s event. Of this, the trust has earmarked nearly Rupees 30 to 40 lakh for the promotion of awards via media and other channels. 

When asked about the award coming at a time when the State is going through a flood crisis in North Karnataka with even the State Government cancelling the Rajyotsava celebrations and the awards, the jury members said the award was to thank those who have endured hardships to contribute towards the development of the city and does not involve any government entity. The expenditure has been toned down to ensure that there is no mega bash for the awards.

The concept and format for the award has been prepared by PriceWaterHouse Cooopers (PWC) and the calendar of events have are as below: Date of opening the nominations (Oct 14 2009), Last date to send the nominations (Nov 14 2009), Shortlisting of probable recipients (Nov 20 2009), Evaluation of the nominations by Jury (Nov 21 2009), Gala event for distributing the awards (Dec 12, 2009).