157 debutants, 100 women in Council

The present Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Council will have maximum number of first timers, almost 80 per cent.

It is feared that most of the decisions will be taken outside the Council as several women corporators are said to be just a proxy for their husbands who could not contest the elections as 50 per cent wards were reserved for women.

Many decisions may be taken unofficially before getting them vetoed inside the Council, say sources. Thanks to changes in the reservation of wards including reserving 50 per cent seats for women, there are more women this time than men. Probably the BBMP has scripted a history of sorts, by having more women than men in the Council – there are 100 women against 98 men in a Council of 198 elected representatives.

Data show that the BJP has 61 women and 39 men corporators whereas there are 29 women and 45 men corporators in Congress. The JD (S) has two women and six men corporators. Among the Independents and minor parties, there are six men and two women.

New faces

The new BBMP council will have 157 first-timers while only 41 have been re-elected. Prominent among them are  former mayors B S Sathyanarayana (Basavanagudi ward) and N Shanthakumari (Maruti Mandir), M K Gunashekar (Jayamahal Ward), B N Manjunatha Reddy (Madiwala), Padmanabha Reddy (Kacharakanahalli ward), Mohan Kumar (Nagarabhavi), M Nagaraju (Gangenahalli), N Nagaraju (Byrasandra), Mohammad Rizwan Nawab (Gurappanapalya), Dr S Raju and Sampath Raj (DJ Halli). As more than 80 per cent members of the new BBMP Council are the first timers, the onus to run the Council will be mainly on experienced corporators.