Ward committees need transparency in selecting members

Ward committees of the Bruhath Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) were constituted to help decentralise the city’s governance, involving citizen representatives at a local, ward level. Now on their last leg, these panels will have to be reconstituted after the Palike’s term ends in August.

Last time, the committees were constituted in a hurry, following the high court’s strict deadlines. What changes can be made for the next set of panels that should be in place once the new BBMP Council is elected? DH interacts with a cross-section of Bengalureans to get their views.

Businessman Murali D observes: “We need to improve public resource management through a participatory budgeting process. Also needed are public policy councils for local project planning, besides budget monitoring. We should also focus on sustainable decentralised planning and development.”

When the panels were formed the last time, there were allegations that corporators had packed the ward committees (WC) with their relatives and friends, diluting the whole purpose.

Rekha Chari, who is a working committee member from ward 65 for this term, feels that there should be transparency in the choice of the panel members. “This transparency should reflect even in the allocation of the ward budget. Deadlines allotted for ward works should be followed up during every committee meeting for timely completion,” she adds.

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The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak has made it difficult to conduct the WC meetings. Rekha elaborates, “For meetings, working committee formats have to be evolved as it will take a long time for normal meetings to happen.”

In her ward (65), she has been in touch with the corporator, Manjunath Raju but not the other WC members. “A Ward Disaster Management Cell has to be formed to handle these situations. I heard this has been done in some wards, but not in our ward. In case the corporator is too busy to handle this, proper delegation of authority should be done and the same should be intimated to the WC members.”

In the past, there have been some positives on the WC front, Rekha notes. “The committee has had quite a number of meetings. A lot of work has been taken up as proposed by WC members, such as building a toilet on 11th main, maintenance of streetlights, underground cabling of Bescom cables and changing the transformer design.”

People who are active at the local level would be the best choice for WCs and the works that the panels undertake, says Ramesh Balikai, who is a teacher at Nagarjuna Pre-University college, Yelahanka. He says, “According to the 74th amendment of the Constitution, respected ward people should be allowed equal participation in local governance.”

However, he adds, “when ward committees were formed last time, people were really upset about the way members were selected. BBMP should focus on locally active people who already have work experience in social issues, and get them onboard to work on different roles. This can balance the workload.”

Read: Bengaluru ward panels as Covid-19 warriors

Balikai also points out the need to incorporate the youth in WC activities. This, he says, can be achieved through effective weekly ward meetings on the progress of works in detail, and by creating awareness through social media platforms.

Blessy P James, a Masters student of Law, has a different view on the committees. “A BBMP without such committees will save time. The Palike commissioner himself can take charge of infrastructure works and distribute them among the educated corporators to boost development,” she says.

Ward development, she says, can be achieved by encouraging participation of people genuinely interested in infrastructure development and by keeping out corrupt officers. “The BBMP must focus on involving those with innovative ideas, which can also help keep the projects budget-friendly,” she adds.