BMLTA, BJP’s key 2018 poll promise, on backburner for a year

The state government has been sitting for a year on the BMLTA bill seeking to create a unified transport authority to streamline the cluttered city traffic.

The Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) bill was finalised in March 2021 after incorporating suggestions and corrections given by the Department of Parliamentary Affairs.

The authority envisaged by the bill will have the chief minister at its helm and will have the heads of BBMP, BDA, urban development, transport, DULT and other departments as members. It is planned to introduce a new regime of collaborative governance as the lack of coordination between departments has led to multiple errors.

“The bill was vetted twice. Different departments, including the finance department, have already given their opinion. All ministers were consulted. However, the exit of B S Yediyurappa and the formation of the new government in July 2021 meant new ministers had to be consulted. There has not been much progress since then,” a senior official said.

Incidentally, a unified transport authority was part of the 42 promises made by the BJP in its manifesto for the 2018 Assembly polls, ‘Namma Bengalurige Namma Vachana’. The party has already begun working on the 2023 elections with the formation of special committees in April.

Daily complaints about traffic

Srinivas Alavilli, head of civic participation at Janaagraha, said the everyday complaints about traffic and poor road conditions should have highlighted the need for BMLTA to the ruling party.

“It is the low-hanging fruit that can set right various structural errors in the governance of the city. Ignoring it means Karnataka will lose its investors. Telangana has offered to provide better infrastructure to industries,” he said referring to the viral tweet by K T Rama Rao asking industrialists to pack their bags to Hyderabad. “Replying to the tweet is not going to solve the problem,” he said.

Alavilli noted that the MLAs of Bengaluru need to participate in making that policy. “If the government is serious about making Bengaluru liveable, then the next Assembly session is crucial. All the MLAs, especially those from Bengaluru, need to debate the bill to finetune it before passing it as the law.

“We can’t keep complaining about bad governance every day when we are sitting on the solution,” he added.