Delimitation of 243 wards ‘unscientific’, claims political outfit

Almost all assembly constituencies located in the central parts of Bengaluru would have lost at least one ward each had the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) followed the electoral rolls of 2021 instead of the outdated 2011 Census.

A study by Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) has also found the BBMP’s delimitation exercise for fixing boundaries for the 243 wards is “unscientific”.

The delimitation committee — tasked with redrawing boundaries for the 243 wards, up from the present 198 — followed the population figures of the Census 2011 report.

“The population of Bengaluru has grown exponentially in the last 10 years,” Srikanth Narasimhan, general secretary of BNP, said. “Even more importantly, the population has grown exponentially on the outskirts while it has not grown by much in the central parts of Bengaluru. Hence, we will end up with a delimitation outcome, which is very uneven across wards,” he said.

He wondered why the BBMP did not use the latest electoral rolls of Bengaluru — released by the Election Commission in 2021 or 2022 — as the basis for redrawing boundaries as it is the most accurate reflection of the current population break-up across wards.

At present, Yeshwantpur, Yelahanka and Bengaluru South assembly segments have around 95,000 voters in each ward, which is the highest. Byatarayanapura and Mahadevapura, too, feature in the top list with the highest number of voters. Shivajinagar, Rajajinagar and Jayanagar feature at the bottom with less than 30,000 voters in each ward. The party which plans to contest in the upcoming BBMP polls has suggested a break-up of wards by following the latest electoral rolls.

Accordingly, the BNP believes Bengaluru South should have the maximum number of wards (17), followed by Yeshwantpur (14) and Mahadevapura (15). The party also believes the number of wards in at least 11 constituencies such as BTM Layout, Chamarajpet, Chickpet, Govindarajanagar, Hebbal, Gandhinagar, Jayanagar, Malleswaram, Rajajinagar, Shanthinagar and Shivajinagar should be reduced by one as the population in these constituencies has come down.

Going by the BBMP’s yet-to-be submitted delimitation report, only Shivajinagar assembly segment has lost a ward and most of the constituencies falling in the outer areas have not got as many wards as suggested by the political start-up.