Five municipal corporations: The Greater Bengaluru Jigsaw puzzle

Bengaluru: “In 1990, when I became a councillor for the first time, Bengaluru city was just 180 sqkm. In 1995, it expanded to 225 sq km. Then came seven town municipal councils and one city municipal council around it. In 2005, it expanded to the 800 sqkm range as Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP),” remarks P R Ramesh, who was the mayor of Bengaluru in 2002, just when the information technology boom started consuming the city.

With the area, wards, population and administrative challenges in governing Bengaluru also increased. The erstwhile Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government attempted to redraw the ward boundaries of Bengaluru but was unable to hold the municipal elections. 

The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government recently passed the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act and notified the five-way division of Bengaluru, paving the way for one reform that can help resolve many issues in the city if implemented correctly, but can also easily cause a mess if not handled carefully.

‘Anti-Kannada’

Like any other exercise related to Bengaluru, this also has turned into a BJP-Congress tug of war. Ramesh N R, former president of the BJP- Bengaluru South District, calls it a “major conspiracy that renders Kannadigas orphans”, “extremely unscientific” and “a conspiracy to sideline the original residents of this land”.

He says the move is anti-Kannada, with the central part being dominated by Urdu and Tamil, the North by Urdu and Telugu, the South by Urdu, Telugu, and some Kannada, and the East by Telugu and North Indian languages. He brands the Western part as “the only area retaining a Kannada majority”.

“As a result, Kannada-speaking members will be permanently denied the mayoral post in four out of the five new corporations. Only Urdu, Telugu, or Tamil speakers are likely to become mayors. This is a grave injustice to Kannadigas and a decision that cannot be undone,” he observes.

There are also political motives, as seen in this step. “In the past two elections held after the formation of BBMP in 2007, the Congress could win only 58 and 76 out of 198 wards. To end the BJP’s hold over BBMP, the Siddaramaiah government has now devised this strategy,” he says in a note.

“In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Rajarajeshwarinagar Assembly Constituency played a major role in the defeat of the Congress candidate by giving a lead of over 90,000 votes to the BJP. Dividing this constituency into three separate corporations appears to be political vengeance,” he says. He adds that the division of the Padmanabhanagar Constituency, represented by Opposition Leader R Ashoka, reflects the politics of jealousy.

Ramesh lists problems such as financial imbalance, unemployment, and real estate issues, which he says corporations in Delhi have faced. “Eventually, the three corporations had to be merged again,” he remarks.

All other metro cities, such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad, function under single corporations; so, why should Bengaluru be any different? He asks.

P R Ramesh, who is a Congress politician, remarks that the move is necessary to help decentralise the city administration. “The city has been growing beyond imagination without proper planning. We need to take such steps to ensure that development is planned well. Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) will coordinate between all the corporations and ensure the functioning of the corporation is smooth,” he says.

The logic behind division

The GBA Act has three conditions hard-coded into it: No corporation should have less than 10 lakh population. The minimum property tax collected should be Rs 300 crores. The population density (population/sqkm) should be greater than 5,000. The GBA Act says assembly constituencies should fit within a corporation “to the extent possible”. 

The Brand Bengaluru Committee, tasked with the division, had to incorporate all these parameters while dividing BBMP into five corporations.

The challenge was to obtain the official population figures for such a major exercise, as the last census was conducted in 2011. Various datasets were also used for this purpose. 

“There is a figure of 1.44 crore population estimated for the BBMP area and for 28 assembly constituencies in 2023 by the district election commissioner, but this does not have ward-wise population, which is important in the context of BBMP division,” says V Ravichandar, who is a part of the committee. 

“On paper, BBMP has 225 wards, but since no elections were held, these wards did not take root in administration. Therefore, the pre-2021 era data for 198 wards is the basis for all statistics. We used this,” he explains. 

The committee also obtained booth-level voter data from the district election officer and estimated the number of voters in the ward, then extrapolated this to the total population using the voter-population ratio for Bengaluru assembly constituencies to arrive at the population estimate.

Balancing revenue

The next challenge was to figure out the revenue for each new corporation. 

“In Delhi, the division failed because they have no overarching structure like GBA. They also had huge differences in their property tax revenues, resulting in imbalances,” he says, adding that the aim was to minimise property tax disparity. 

BBMP’s latest 2024-25 property tax data was used to estimate this. The East division had the largest area, low population, but high revenue. The West division had a higher population but lower revenue. Efforts were made to minimise revenue disparity, with various permutations and combinations. 

When a balancing act was attempted, more assembly constituencies were cut, or the population disparity between East and West became huge. Increasing the East population to over 10 lakhs without a significant impact on property tax increases was challenging. 

The jigsaw puzzle of balancing population, revenue, and constituencies finally resulted in a model where the maximum difference between the corporation (as per the 2024-25 property tax receipt data) is approximately Rs 360 crore. This proposal was cleared by the State Cabinet and has been gazetted as a draft notification, superseding the BBMP Act 2020.

However, five out of 28 assembly constituencies are getting cut: Yashwanthpura and Padmanabhanagar are shared between West and South, Dasarahalli is shared between North and West, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, which is in the West, also extends to North and a very small part to the South as well; and Mahadevpura extends from East to South. 

Would this impact any of the MLAs of those constituencies?

“Since MLA is a part of the corporation, he/she has voting rights in the Corporation in which a large part of the constituency falls. They can attend the council proceedings in any Corporation where their constituency extends, but they can not vote there,” explains Ravichandar. This means there is no problem practically for MLAs to function.

The state gives 60-70% of the overall capital expenditure budget as grants to the BBMP under various schemes, which will continue in future as well. The property tax revenue will be allocated to salaries, maintenance, and revenue expenditure. There will also be inflows into the Corporations from SFC and CFC transfers.

What next?

Both the BJP and the Congress Party have been exploring various ways to govern Bengaluru more effectively, while also trying to balance their interests. As a result, every new proposal, from the master plan to city governance models and elections, reaches the courts. Civic groups also join such fights with objections and reasons. 

The draft of the five-way division has been notified, and people can submit their objections and observations within 30 days. Once the draft is revised and modifications are made, the final notification will be published. 

Then comes the ward delimitation exercise, which involves redrawing ward boundaries in each ward. Each city corporation can have up to 150 wards per the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act. This exercise is likely to take its own time, as no party is generally happy with what the other political party does.

Once the corporations are formed, there will also be an administrative and infrastructural overhaul, including the division and movement of files among various sections, as well as numerous other tasks.

Only time can reveal how long all these processes will take, and when Bengaluru will see the five corporations actually functioning. Meanwhile, the city will continue to be governed without councillors, who form the foundation of local democracy.