Panel moots 400 wards,5 corporations for Bengaluru

The B S Patil BBMP restructuring committee, which submitted its final report to Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Thursday, has recommended that the city’s governance be restructured by creating multiple municipal corporations in a three-tier governance framework.

The committee has envisaged the creation of empowered ward committees at the lowest level, five corporations at the mid-level and the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) at the top.

According to the recommendations, the GBA will be governed by the chief minister for the first five years, after which it will be administered by a directly elected mayor.

Patil and panel members — former bureaucrat Siddaiah and urban planning expert V Ravichandar — said that they had also recommended an increase in the number of wards from 198 to 400.

Brushing aside apprehensions that Bengaluru would be “split”, the trio clarified that they had only sought a decentralised administration.

A centralised administration with one corporation for a mega city like Bengaluru was not viable or sustainable, they said.

Siddaiah said that the committee had studied big cities like Johannesburg, Sao Paulo and London, where the administration had been decentralised. He also said that big cities in India too had multiple corporations.

While Kolkata, like the London boroughs, had 32 corporations, New Delhi had three corporations and Mumbai had eight corporations.