Greater Bengaluru Bill disempowers the people

The final version fails to meet the expectations of citizens as well as the requirements of the Constitution.

One was hoping that with the joint select committee (JSC) of the legislature—set up to review the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill (GBGB)—conducting zone-wise public consultations, the deficiencies in adhering to the Constitution in the GBGB would be removed. But the final bill has failed to meet the expectations of citizens as well as the requirements of the Constitution.   

Timely conduct of elections, the first mandate in the 74th Constitutional Amendment (74th CA), is not happening because delimitation of wards, fixing reservations and issuing election notifications are still in the hands of the state government.

The suggestion that these powers should be handed over to the state election commission (SEC) was made by several CSOs who spoke at the public consultation. If the JSC was interested in upholding the Constitution, this change should have been made. But the GBGB still says that the state government will continue to hold the power to set up the delimitation commission. So, if the GBGB becomes law, citizens will continue to be deprived of a democratically elected local government for years together, as has happened now.

The Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), a body headed by the chief minister with several ministers and all MLAs and MPs, whose constituencies lie or who reside within the greater Bengaluru area, are all members of the GBA with voting rights. This overturns the basic requirement of the 74th CA — that the higher strata of the government should not interfere in the functioning of urban local self-governments (ULSGs). 

Several bureaucrats are also members with voting rights in the GBA, which goes against the principle that bureaucrats should not have voting rights on policy decisions. The GBA has also been made the “planning authority” for the areas comprising the greater Bengaluru area instead of the metropolitan planning committee (MPC) mandated in the 74th CA.

In the original bill placed before the Assembly, a financial advisory committee under the GBA had been given powers to re-distribute property tax among the proposed corporations replacing the BBMP, to bring equitable development between them. But, during one public consultation by the JSC, it claimed its total commitment to the Constitution and said that it was recommending
the removal of the financial advisory committee, as it went “against the
Constitution”. 

The CSOs then questioned how the JSC had completely ignored the important requirement for an MPC mandated in the 74th CA to plan for Bengaluru, if they were so committed to adhering to the Constitution. They also demanded that the MPC should have been the umbrella body headed by the BBMP mayor, bringing coherent planning among all the parastatals working in Bengaluru, instead of the proposed GBA, which had no constitutional status.    

Perhaps, stung by this criticism of violating the Constitution, the JSC has introduced Section 14(2)(c) in the revised bill, constituting the Bengaluru metropolitan planning committee (BMPC) to abide by the Constitution. The BMPC, too, shall be headed by the CM and shall prepare a ‘draft development plan’ for an area bigger than the greater Bengaluru area. 

One needs to recall that there is also the BMRDA at the Bengaluru metropolitan region level preparing a structure plan for the entire region; it is also chaired by the CM. So, how many plans will the CM make and hand them over to himself for approval?  

Citizens are only too aware of what happened to the MPC that was constituted only after a High Court directive in January 2014, 20 years after the 74th CA was brought into force. It was kept in limbo with no meetings being conducted, while BDA, a body accountable to the state government, continued to plan for Bengaluru. There is enough reason for citizens to be sceptical about this BMPC ever being activated.

While the original GBGB proposed to split Bengaluru into 10 corporations, supposedly for better decentralisation, the JSC has cut it down to a maximum seven. But the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC) had recommended that having zonal councils under a single apex body was an effective means of decentralisation in big cities. 

This provision was there in the BBMP Act of 2020, allowing 10 zonal councils with enhanced powers under a single BBMP, retaining the identity of the city.  But this healthy measure has been discarded in the GBGB. Splitting BBMP may lead to a further lack of coordination among the several mayors, in addition to weakening them under an overbearing GBA headed by the CM.

An anachronistic provision included in the BBMP Act of 2020 was the establishment of a constituency consultative committee, headed by the MLA of the Assembly constituency, supervising the ward committee and the zonal committee. This provision, totally violative
of the 74th CA, has been continued
in the GBGB as an ‘Assembly constituency-level consultative and co-ordination committee’ by alleged followers of the Constitution.

On making citizen participation more effective, the CSOs had suggested that area sabha representatives should be selected by the area sabha members (voters) themselves from each polling booth area, instead of being nominated by the councillors, and they should automatically be the members of the ward committee. But citizen activists are now enraged that the JSC version of GBGB allows nomination of four ward committee members by the GBA. 

But the even more shocking thing is that the JSC has done away completely with the area sabhas, which were very much there in the original GBGB and the BBMP Act of 2020. The area sabha is the urban version of the grama sabha in rural areas, which empowers every voter to be part of the planning and decision-making for his/her area. 

A further provision weakening citizen participation is that the recommendations of the ward committee are advisory in nature, whereas the decisions of the grama sabha are ultimate and final in the rural areas. And shockingly, the power of the councillor to ‘veto’ decisions of the ward committee, which was not there in the BBMP Act, has been introduced by the JSC. 

Framing bye-laws on Acts and rules to suit their particular situation is a prerogative of individual municipal corporations.  But that, too, is being throttled now with the GBA having the power to thrust bye-laws framed by it on the seven municipal corporations.

One expected a government that waxes eloquently on the Constitution to do better.  While “power to the people” was the leitmotif of the 74th CA, it has been changed to “disempower the people” in the GBGB.

(The writer is the Executive Trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore)