‘Greater B’lore is not the best solution’

‘Greater B’lore is not the best solution’
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Greater Bangalore might as well run contradictory to the objectives set by the government’s draft notification as the bigger system might collapse under the load of lofty objectives.

Many city MLAs have expressed their concern about the government not publicly debating the other options and former mayor P R Ramesh sees many loopholes in the grand urban redesign.

According to the draft notification, following are the objectives to be served by Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP);

Improve and co-ordinate infrastructure development for road and transportation network, water supply UGD, solid waste management.

Upgrade quality of urban civic services

Strengthen administrative capacity to ensure better enforcement of various rules as also better co-ordination in service delivery.

Optimise expenditure on establishment.

BMP’s performance had been dismal in all these areas. The civic body that sets aside about Rs 600 crore per year for road works and solid waste management could never execute the works in any given financial year. Even now BMP is yet to complete the spill over civil works worth Rs 200 crore. The solid waste management was never satisfactory as the civic body did not complete scientific landfills despite Supreme Court orders.

The urban civic services like issuance khata and property tax collection was below the mark. Bribery in khata process was rampant while the property tax collection of BMP was never more than 60 per cent.

As per the KMC Act, the existing rules of the BMP would extend to BBMP but BMP itself was never effective in enforcing building bylaw and advertisement rules. BMP began enforcement of building bylaw in Koramangala only after a High Court order and violations of advertisement rules were never controlled. Further, the BMP already faced with manpower shortage as it needs about 150 engineers.

Many councillors have expressed their disappointment at the audit objections to a total expenditure of about Rs 700 crore in the past. Despite many complaints, the expenditure was not optimised and BBMP could only worsen the case.

Ramesh said that he would be writing to the government soon on these issues.