Building a better Bengaluru

Address inequality and unsustainable development through decentralisation, citizen participation

Will the new government help solve Bengaluru’s problems of increasing inequality and ecologically unsustainable development in the once-famous garden city? To address these issues, the new government has revived the B S Patil Committee to restructure Bengaluru’s governance. Undoubtedly, the revived committee will reiterate its earlier recommendation to split BBMP into four or five smaller corporations, each with its own mayor and a directly elected mayor at the Greater Bengaluru Authority level. The new government has already shown its inclination to accept this recommendation.

Also Read | Karnataka govt launches portal inviting suggestions on Bengaluru development

However, before embarking on the venture to split BBMP, shouldn’t we first understand why New Delhi has opted to re-unite its three corporations that were previously divided? Will this not create another avenue for non-coordination between independent mayors? The BBMP Act of 2020 introduced increased decentralisation through more than 10 Zonal Committees, each with its own chairperson but under a single BBMP. Wouldn’t this be a better solution to ensure coordination while retaining the city’s single identity?

The new government also plans to redo the delimitation of BBMP wards. The ongoing political wrangling over delimitations, fixing reservations, and election notifications persists because these powers still lie with the state government, whereas they should be under the State Election Commission (SEC). The transfer of these powers to the SEC should be undertaken now so that tasks and elections are conducted every five years without fail, providing citizens with a democratically elected local government as ordained in the 74th Constitutional Amendment (CA).

Although there are plans to decongest traffic by constructing flyovers, underpasses, and similar measures, transportation experts have advised against such ad hoc decisions. Shouldn’t the state government adhere to the 74th CA, which mandates a Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) for Bengaluru’s planning, and utilise the existing BMLTA to create a Comprehensive Mobility Plan?

One anachronistic provision included in the BBMP Act of 2020 is the establishment of a Constituency Consultative Committee, headed by the MLA of the Assembly constituency, between the ward committee and the zonal committee. This is totally violative of the 74th CA, which mandates the third tier of government to be a local self-government without interference from the higher tiers of government. Will such provisions emerge again in the proposed new Bill?

Karnataka now has three different Acts: the BBMP Act, the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (KMC) Act for other municipal corporations, and the Karnataka Municipalities (KM) Act for smaller cities. A disturbing development is the ‘Inequality before Law’ created between citizens of all these cities, violating Article 14 of the Constitution. This is evident especially in the differing ways citizen participation, through Ward Committees and Area Sabhas, has been devised under the three Acts on the same issue.

Currently, the nomination process for Area Sabha Representatives (ASRs) and Ward Committee members in the BBMP and KMC Acts lacks transparency and is marked by favouritism and nepotism. Moreover, the BBMP Act renders the ward committee decisions recommendatory, weakening citizen participation. The KM (Amendment) Act 2020 (Karnataka Act No. 39 of 2020) for smaller cities, on the other hand, has a democratic method wherein voters themselves select their ASRs, who sit automatically on the Ward Committee as members with voting rights.

Questioning ‘Inequality before Law’ in the three Acts, a PIL was filed in October 2021 before the HC by civil society organisations. The HC accepted the petition, and the then government agreed to set up an Expert Committee to bring “Equality before Law” between the three Acts. This Expert Committee needs to be set up immediately, and the democratic model of the KM (Amdt.) Act needs to be built into the new Act to enhance citizen participation and make the processes uniform in all cities.

The BBMP Act of 2020 had a lot of wholesale ‘cut and paste’ provisions from the existing KMC Act. But it also had a few fresh provisions enabling accountability in budget formulation under the Karnataka Local Fund Authorities Fiscal Responsibility Act (KLFAFRA). But these are provisions desirable for all municipalities, not just Bengaluru. Also, Zonal Committees and the MPC foreseen only for BBMP are needed in Mysuru and Hubballi-Dharwad, as these cities are sure to have crossed the limit of 10 lakh population, which makes it mandatory for them to also have an MPC, as per the 74th CA.

Given the repetitions, inequalities, and selective prescriptions in the three Acts, would it not be better to replace all three Acts with a common comprehensive enactment for all cities, as in the Kerala Municipalities Act of 1994? This comprehensive enactment can endow all municipalities with coherence and common powers to enable them to function as “institutions of self-government” and implement plans for “economic development and social justice” as required under the 74th CA. Special provisions for BBMP and for other municipal corporations can be added to this Act where necessary.

There are suggestions that the MPC should be set up at the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region level, covering three districts, with the CM as chairman. But the MPC was foreseen as a decentralised planning body of the third tier of government in the 74th CA for bottom-up planning from the grassroots, parallel to the District Planning Committees for other areas. Making it a top-down body at the metropolitan region level headed by the CM goes against the intent of the 74th CA. To implement the intent of the 74th CA, it may be necessary to retain the MPC, perhaps at the BDA area level with the mayor of Bengaluru as its head, and create a separate body at the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region Level under the CM at the state government level.

Will the new government show its adherence to the Constitutional values embedded in the 74th CA?

(The writer is the executive trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore.)