Finally, welcome to Greater Bangalore

Finally, welcome to Greater Bangalore
The Times of India

Bangalore: Bangalore has become bigger! On Tuesday evening, the municipality of Bangalore officially became Greater Bangalore or Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike.
The final notification was issued by the state government on Tuesday evening. This means the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, BMP, the citizenry’s favourite punching bag, ceases to exist.
The city’s area now boasts of 741 sq km, an exponential increase from the BMP area of 225 sq km. Greater Bangalore is divided into eight zones; BMP had three.
The government has decreed that the present set of people including commissioners and officials at various levels would continue in their existing designations. Which means, the administrator and commissioner of the hitherto BMP would continue with their present dispensation.
Explains Gaurav Gupta, special commissioner, BMP (now BBMP): “In accordance with the government’s notification we will be issuing an order that commissioners and officials at various levels in the CMCs too would continue with their post until a redeployment is done. We need a huge workforce, engineers, revenue officials, health officials. It is a huge administrative challenge”
Just like Mumbai’s Bruhan Mumbai Corporation, Bangalore is now Greater Bangalore, a single monolith entity comprising BMP city areas, the 7 CMCs, 1 TMC and 111 villages.
For a backgrounder, various governments in Karnataka have been mulling over the option of merging the city areas with the peripheral urban local bodies, for 10 years now. The proposal got a concrete shot in the arm with the H D Kumaraswamy government taking a decision in September 2006, on having a Greater Bangalore.
Following discussions at various levels, a draft notification was issued in late November. In the interim periods leading up to the final notification, various citizen groups could put out objections and suggestions to the proposal. It is not yet clear what suggestions of the citizenry have been incorporated in the final notification.
The 111 villages along with the following CMCs and TMC — Mahadevapura, Yelahanka, Bommanahalli, K R Puram, Dasarahalli, Byatarayanapura, Kengeri — are all part of Bangalore.