CMC cousins have reason to smile

CMC cousins have reason to smile
It’s one merger that is slated to shake up the civic woes of Bangalore. Greater Bangalore, a marriage of BMP limits with municipal councils, could mean a change in the way issues are addressed.

The Times of India


Popularly billed the poor cousins of BMP (Bangalore Mahanagara Palike), the seven CMCs (city municipal councils) and one TMC (Town Municipal Council), will be merged with the BMP, a la Greater Mumbai or Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

This spells a veritable fiscal fortune for the CMCs whose finances have been dwindling, explain CMC authorities. Sample this: each CMC’s annual budget ranges from Rs 20 crore to a maximum of Rs 35 crore. An amount that the BMP allocates for a single park in the city!

In fact, the Bommanahalli CMC alone catalysed the need for merger in the wake of last year’s deluge which exposed the pathetic condition of roads, drains and water supply. Former chief minister Dharam Singh while on a recce of damage assessment last year, was forced by Puttenahalli residents to stop and listen. Did it work? A drainage restoration system was galvanised immediately and truncated mid-way.

With Greater Bangalore, the thinking is that infrastructure and civic amenities can be extended to Bangalore agglomerate. The drainage system for instance. If a drain in Koramangala needs to be desilted, the water has to be pushed to the outskirts, in this case Bommanahalli CMC. “The purpose of putting in place so much of civic work does not then help, if another area gets flooded because of this. The drainage system of the entire city needs to be cleaned if floods are to be avoided,’’ BMP commissioner K Jothiramalingam had said during the recent council meeting. In fact he had appealed to corporators to think beyond “my ward’’ so as to enable Greater Bangalore.

The BMP has already undertaken work on the CMCs by stepping up the valley projects where all the city’s major valleys — Vrishabhavathi, Hebbal, Koramangala, Challaghatta — are being desilted for some Rs 600 crore.

Merger benefits all
Construction activity is booming in the CMC areas. Each CMC area boasts of at least five townships. Bommanahalli alone has over 25 huge apartment complexes. Dasarahalli has an entire industrial township. Real estate developers are of the opinion that the merger would serve well for the CMC areas.

B M Jayeshankar, president, Karnataka Ownership Apartments Promoters’ Association (KOAPA) and managing director of Adarsh Group: It’s a much-needed step. Infrastructure is very poor in CMC areas. There are no roads, footpaths, water supply and sewerage lines. That’s partly because they don’t receive much revenue. BDA and BMP collect development and betterment charges in their areas of jurisdiction, but CMCs don’t have access to such revenues.

M A Vakil, CMD,
Vakil Housing: The CMC administration is bad. Corruption is high. Nobody takes responsibility and we are shunted from pillar to post for sanctions. According to the rules, after we set up a layout, we are expected to hand over maintenance of roads and streetlights, among other things, to the government. But CMCs invariably don’t take it saying they don’t have the funds. The integration of CMCs will hopefully resolve a lot of these issues.

TOP GUNS SPEAK
Yelahanka is an area covered extensively under the green belt. Despite this, lot of construction activity is happening, unauthorised layouts are coming up every day and we watch helplessly.This puts pressure on the rest of the area which gets deprived of civic amenities. Greater Bangalore will probably help in taking action against unauthorised constructions.
— Mohammad Kalimullah, Yelahanka CMC commissioner

The Peenya industrial town has burgeoned massively. So many industries have come up on agricultural land.According to 2001 census, the population of the area stands at 2 lakh. It has doubled in the last five years. How can this small area spread across 38 sq km take this burden? People in Bangalore talk of bad roads. Let them come here. They’ll realise that the city’s roads are so pampered.
— C G Suprasanna, CMC Dasarahalli commissioner