Citizen groups appalled at government’s move to push new BBMP bill

The citizen groups have dubbed the government’s move to push through a new Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Bill a ‘shocker’ since it bypasses public discussion and debate completely.

The bill promises a five-year mayoral term and division of the city into multiple zones among a slew of measures.

Increasing the mayor’s term to five years without giving powers to run the city is like a toothless tiger getting a bigger cage, said Srinivas Alavilli from Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB). “It won’t help. Political accountability comes when the mayor can make big decisions and can execute them.”

Ward committees, he said, should be empowered bodies and not advisory ones if we really want to decentralise governance.

“The constitution of ward committee itself is broken in the KMC Act, and we don’t know what the new bill says about that,” Alavilli noted.

The new proposed legislation is not transformative for Bengaluru by any stretch of the imagination, said V Ravichandar, urban planning expert who was part of the BBMP Restructuring Committee. “It is a modification of the KMC Act for the Palike and delinks it from the other eight municipal corporations.”

However, the proposal to increase the number of wards from 198 to 225 is a good feature, he said.

“The mayor, zonal committee (maximum of 15), zonal commissioners and ward committee make their entry as municipal authorities,” he said.

The ward committee would be only advisory in nature. The bill also says local officers of BDA, BWSSB, police and Bescom would have to attend the committee meetings. MLAs, MLCs, MPs will have voting rights although they have been dropped from the zonal committee. “Best of Luck with that!” quipped Ravichandar.

Bengaluru’s woes, he said, stem from poorly planned, uncoordinated outcomes across the silos of government agencies. The bill does not address this at all. “The government can pass this or any tinkered bill as the new BBMP Act. But engaging with it as the fix for Bengaluru is a mirage,” he said.

The citizens, he said, will still be overwhelmed by the exponential rise in our daily woes of traffic, garbage, water, sanitation, pollution and more.