Concerns pile over BBMP's new ward alignment

The newly-carved wards of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which were notified last Friday, have caused confusion and concern among residents.

Many wards are either in irregular shape or are disproportionate to the population. In fact, the boundaries of a few wards are cutting across residential layouts, slums and even primary roads.

At least three wards have isolated areas with fragmented boundaries, while a few others have unnecessary sharp turns. For residents, accessing the ward office, or meeting BBMP engineers and councillors could pose challenges.

An instance of this is the Rajendra Nagar slum area in the BTM Assembly constituency. Certain portions of the densely populated settlements now fall under three distinct wards: Koramangala, Adugodi, and Ejipura. This situation might create voting pockets for politically-connected candidates aspiring to contest from these wards, but they have divided the residents in the process.

Likewise, residential layouts developed by the BDA have been split, forcing certain areas into a particular ward, and others into separate ones.

“Kasturi Nagar is a small layout that should have remained within a single ward. However, a portion of it now falls under Benniganahalli and CV Raman Nagar. This seems clearly motivated by political factors, offering no benefit to residents,” said Venugopal Rai, president of the Kasturi Nagar Residents’ Welfare Association.

In Sarvagnanagar, residents expressed similar sentiments. BDA-developed layouts such as HBR Layout, HRBR Layout, and OMBR Layout have been broken, bringing some areas in different wards.

“We will communicate our concerns to the relevant authorities,” a resident said.

There has been a significant realignment in most of the 225 newly-carved wards. But not all are irregular, as seen in wards within the Assembly constituencies like Vijayanagar, Govindarajanagar, Basavanagudi, and Malleshwaram.

But those within the Assembly segments such as CV Raman Nagar, Jayanagar, Mahadevapura, and Hebbal are very irregularly shaped. Similarly, several of the recently-established wards having irregular shapes include Chamundi Nagar in Hebbal, Hoodi in Mahadevapura, Pulakeshinagar (which encompasses parts of Benson Town, Cantonment and Frazer Town), Agaram ward in Shantinagar, Konena Agrahara in CV Raman Nagar, and the Padmanabhnagar ward.

Clement Jayakumar, a member of the Mahadevapura Task Force, voiced that the constituency should have had no fewer than 13 wards.

“Certain apartment complexes here have populations equivalent to entire wards within the core area. The Varthur ward alone spans
28 square km, equaling
the size of 20 regular wards in the CBD area,” he stated,
suggesting that the government should have employed distinct population criteria for wards in the core and peripheral
areas, given that Census 2011
served as the foundational
document.

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