Delimitation commission to carve out 243 BBMP wards

It’s official. The state government on Wednesday increased the number of BBMP corporators from 198 to 243 and set up a commission to carve out the new wards.

The Urban Development Department set the ball rolling by issuing two separate notifications. While the first notification formally fixed the number of corporators at 243, the second notification set up a four-member commission for the delimitation of wards.

The notifications came about two weeks after the government notified the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (Third Amendment) Act, 2020, that increased the number of BBMP wards to a minimum of 225 and a maximum of 250. A joint committee of the state legislature headed by BJP MLA, S Raghu, had recommended increasing the number of wards.

The delimitation commission has been given a tenure of six months, and will consist of the BBMP commissioner, the Bengaluru Urban deputy commissioner, the BDA commissioner and the BBMP special commissioner (revenue).

The 45 new wards will be carved out of the existing BBMP jurisdiction. The amendments to KMC Act also specified that the commission should divide the city into wards in such a manner that their area, “as far as possible, shall be within the jurisdiction of an assembly constituency”.

“The wards will be created so that each corporator represents about 35,000 people instead of the present 42,000 people. The legislature committee is also looking into a special law for Bengaluru. But since the process for notifying the law is time-consuming, it was decided to go ahead with the delimitation,” an official said.