BBMP Bill should bar corporators’ blood relatives from ward panels

The new BBMP Bill should clearly bar blood relatives of corporators from ward committee memberships.

Articulated by BBMP BJP leader Padmanabha Reddy at a ‘City Politics’ webinar here, this demand indicates a need to clean up the process of decentralisation of governance.

Still, in its infancy, the ward committees had taken baby steps in grassroots democracy during the latter part of the last Council.

However, many panels were packed with friends and family members of corporators and not local citizen activists and representatives of residents associations as mandated.

The Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, as Reddy pointed out, has the provision to disqualify councillors if they award contracts to family members. He said the BBMP Bill should echo this, and also activate the powers conferred on ward committees. But for other participants in the webinar organised by Janaagraha, ward panel members’ family mattered less and their active participation in governance mattered more.

Srikant Narasimhan from Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) contended that as long as the selection process is transparent, friends/family does not matter.

A five-year term for the mayor is a key provision in the bill. Narasimhan said it is a must. “Just imagine if we had a prime minister with a one-year term. The same applies to the mayor too,” he said.

‘Mayor is a puppet’

However, Shanthala Damle from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was convinced that the term does not matter since “the mayor is a puppet”.

Dubbing the bill as ‘old wine in a new bottle”, C N Deepak from the Karnataka Rashtra Samiti questioned the need for separate legislation when the KMC Act could have been amended.

For Congress leader Abdul Wahid, lack of a consultative approach was the problem with the bill. “They could have discussed the bill in the last Council and Assembly. Yes, we do need a separate law for Bengaluru. But did they consult experts, senior corporators, and senior citizens?”

The bill has no provision for integrated planning and development of the city.

Identified as a ‘miss’ in the draft legislation by activist Srinivas Alavilli, the flaw was emphasised by Damle, who drew attention to the Mumbai civic body that had all the para-statal agencies under one roof.

Reddy preferred an empowered mayor, but wanted checks and balances if those powers were misused. He was also against direct elections to the post, recalling how it was tried out in Tamil Nadu but did not work.