A bigger city, many hopes

A bigger city, many hopes
Deccan Herald

As the concept of Greater Bangalore gets set for a shift in mode – from plan to action – the City administration is busy chalking out development strategies.


As the concept of Greater Bangalore gets set for a shift in mode – from plan to action – the City administration is busy chalking out development strategies.

In an interaction with Deccan Herald on Wednesday, Minister R Ashok, in-charge of Bangalore Urban District, along with K Jairaj, Commissioner, Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, M A Sadiq, Deputy Commissioner, Bangalore Urban, Subhash Chandra, Secretary, Urban Development, Gaurav Gupta, Special Commissioner, BMP and Venkat Raju, Chief Engineer (Maintenance), BWSSB made a presentation on the government’s development agenda for Greater Bangalore.

The Minister and officials touched upon a variety of parameters that would constitute the blueprint for Greater Bangalore, from decentralisation of power to property taxation to ward delimitation to enforcement of building bylaw violations.
A new law for Greater B’lore

The long-pending demand for a separate legislation to govern local body administration, will soon be a reality.

The State Government has decided to enact a legislation exclusively for the proposed Bruhath Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), under which seven City Municipal Councils, one Town Municipal Council and 111 villages in the periphery of the city will be merged with the existing 100 wards of Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP), according to BMP Commissioner K Jairaj.

The existing Karnataka Municipal Corporation (KMC) Act, which governs the administration of all municipal corporations in the State, including BMP, will not be applicable to the proposed BBMP.

As the administrative set up under Greater Bangalore will be entirely different from other city corporations, there is a need for a separate Act. “There are many problems that are confined to Bangalore alone. So we need a set of separate rules to deal with them,” BMP Special Commissioner Gourav Gupta explained.

The government through the new legislation is planning to shoot many of the problems that are in the way of BBMP, in one go. It may be increasing the number of wards, from 100 in BMP to 148 in BBMP, or fixing the service charges, fixing property tax rates so on and so forth.

Governor T N Chaturvedi recently returned the Greater Bangalore Ordinance, questioning the government’s move to increase the number of wards to more than 100. Under the existing KMC (Act), any corporation can have a maximum of 100 wards in its limits.

The government will also take a decision on the role and responsibilities of the Mayor of BBMP, the Standing Committees and more importantly the Commissioner and Zonal Deputy Commissioners. Why Greater Bangalore?

Minister Ashok speaks -

*Uniform development of the City

*High time to have a blue print for long-term plan for city’s growth

*Outskirts of City has more potential to generate resources; this has to be used for development.

*CMC like Mahadevapura is collecting more revenue compared to many corporations. Then why not the CMC be part of Bangalore?

*Encroachment of lakes, vacant land, govt properties can be effectively curbed.

Bangaloreans, don’t worry...

*No diversion of tax money from core area to new area

*Infrastructure development & services in core area will not be compromised

*No politics involved in formation of GB

*No ad hoc plans; we have vision for long-term development

*It is now or never; GB has to be put in place today

*Land prices have already reached a peak on the outskirts of BMP

*The question of rise in land prices does not arise
Decentralised administration

Day-to-day administration of Greater Bangalore will see ‘a more decentralised’ system though the pattern will be similar to the zone-wise management as it is in BMP.

Greater Bangalore will have eight zones as against the present three - East, South and West. Each zone will be headed by a Deputy Commissioner. The Bangalore core area has 30 ranges and 20 more ranges will be created.



Enforcement in respect of violation of building or advertisement bylaws, encroachment of footpaths, vacant properties etc is given special emphasis. The enforcement wing in the zones will be headed by an officer of the rank of Superintendent of Police. Besides enforcement, issues with respect to some 15 other services too will be addressed at the zonal level. Meaning, there will be no need for the citizens to contact the GB head office with respect to these issues.

The new zones are

(Number of ranges in each zone indicated in brackets)
Byatarayanapura (4)
Mahadevapura (5)
Bommanahalli (4)
Rajarajeshwari Nagar (4)
Dasarahalli (3)

Each zone will have following departments: Engineering, Revenue, Health, Sanitation, Public Grievance Cell, Accounts, Horticulture, Electrical, Town Planning, Enforcement, Welfare, Advertisement and market, Estate, IT, Law.


When BMP has not met the expectations of Bangaloreans, then how can the government improve infrastructure in Greater Bangalore (GB) three-times bigger than BMP?

Here’s what officials had to say....

Rome was not built in a day or can ever be built in a day. Similarly, formation of GB is a continuous process. We cannot calculate the work being done in percentage. The paper work is almost complete but work on the ground will be a continuous process.

Subhash Chandra,
Secretary, Urban Development

Each zonal office will be a complete unit and it will function as BMP head office. People from new areas need not come to BBMP in NR Square to get their work done. Physical investment will be funded under JN-NURM for formation of GB. Tax collection from new areas will touch Rs 200 crore from the present Rs 51 cr (from 7 CMCs+1 TMC).
GB can be a success provided efficient officers are posted as zonal heads to execute the plans. Capacity to execute plans in public domain is our biggest challenge. Officers should be ruthless while dealing with encroachers of land.

K Jairaj, BMP Commissioner

The deadline to file objection to the formation of GB is over. As many as 114 responses were received. Of this, 29 were objections and the rest suggestions. The amalgamation of areas is a delicate issue to handle.

M A Sadiq,
Deputy Commissioner, Bangalore Urban

It is not for the first time that Bangalore’s jurisdiction is being expanded. CMCs were carved out of urban villages in 1995. We need to create even working field for the growing needs of the City.

Gourav Gupta,
Special Commissioner, BMP
Fresh delimitation

The average population of each ward in Greater Bangalore will be about 43,000, as now.

The fresh delimitation, to carve out 148 wards, will be based on the 2001 population census. With population as a parameter for the delimitation, wards will be smaller in more densely populated core areas of Bangalore and get larger towards the periphery.

Bangalore Urban Deputy Commissioner M A Sadiq said blockwise census data is being utilised for the delimitation process. The 741 sq km-Greater Bangalore has been divided into 12,000 blocks. Based on the population density of these blocks, they would be integrated into wards. The entire exercise is expected to be completed in the next two months.

Mr Sadiq said the 111 villages included in Greater Bangalore fall within the ambit of the Comprehensive Development Plan, 2015 prepared by BDA. Each of these villages fulfill the urban parameters like population, population density, income, income from agricultural occupation and development in BDA areas.
Water issue still to be addressed...

Greater Bangalore may remain parched for a long while to come. The blueprint on its drinking water requirements is yet to be drafted. It will, therefore, be a while before we know the quantity of water required for areas under GB.

The water supply and sanitation pipelines have to be laid from scratch, at least in the incoming villages (numbering 111), say officials. The time-frame for laying the pipelines depends on the availability of BWSSB’s feeder lines in the vicinity of these villages. The cost of work in these villages can be anywhere in the order of Rs 1,000 crore, they contend.

On Wednesday, District in-charge Minister R Ashok and officials themselves sought to bill the upcoming Rs 25-crore Netakal Balancing Reservoir project, about 100 km from the City, as one of the projects planned for GB. The supply from it will begin in three months, they said.

However, the NBR project was approved by the BWSSB board in August 2005, well before GB or the merger of BMP with the surrounding local bodies started making news. NBR will augment the water supply to the City and CMCs by 100 MLD (Million Litres per Day). The additional water has to be lifted from NBR to Torekadanahalli pumping station, some 10 km away, before reaching the City.

Under the circumstances, the BWSSB’s ongoing Rs 810-crore project by the name GBWASP (Greater Bangalore Water Supply and Sanitation Project) also becomes a misnomer. The project, though meant to meet requirements in the CMCs and Kengeri TMC, was also planned long before the GB idea was conceived. Officials claim that 60 per cent of the pipeline-laying work under GBWASP has been completed. However, no date has been arrived at for starting the house-to-house supply.

Much of it will depend on the 500 MLD of water expected from the Cauvery IV Stage II Phase project. The point is that the set date for completion of the project is still a few years away – in 2011.

Borewells and mini water supply schemes are meeting the requirements in the CMC areas, is the official refrain for the moment. BWSSB’s current supply of 910 MLD reaches 300 sq km - BMP (226 sq km) and parts of Yelahanka CMC and Kengeri TMC.

Greater B’lore vs greater Mumbai

Greater Mumbai -Greater Bangalore

Area (sq.km) 437.7- 741

Population 1.19 crore- 58 lakh

Total wards 227 -148

Zones 6 -8

Total staff 1.23 lakh -20,836

Annual budget Rs 5,497 crore- Rs 2,000 crore*

Tenure of Mayor 2.5 years- one year

Water supply Provided by the urban body- Separate agency, BWSSB

Legislation Separate Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act 1888 -Separate Act planned for Bangalore