Bangalore map set to change

Bangalore map set to change
S Kushala | TNN

Bangalore: Coming civic polls, you may have to go to a polling booth which could be different from that of your back-street neighbour’s. Or the road where you live now may not belong to the same ward.
With Bangalore becoming bigger and the number of wards increasing, the contours of the city are all set to change. The government-appointed committee to carry out the delimitation process — reshuffling the existing wards and carving out new ones — has recommended that there be 145 wards. The KMC Act has been amended recently to increase the number of wards from the current 100 to 150.
The ongoing delimitation process will take into account the 741 sq km of bigger Bangalore. The city has been divided into six sectors, based on which the ward classification has been done — Bellary Road-Old Madras Road, Old Madras Road-Hosur Road, Hosur Road-Kanakapura Road, Kanakapura Road-Mysore Road, Mysore Road-Tumkur Road and Tumkur Road-Bellary Road, with Vidhana Soudha being the centre point.
The existing wards will undergo a lot of changes in terms of population, boundaries and ward number. The delimitation committee will also set right the anomalies of population discrepancies. The new ward classification will adopt a uniform pattern, M A Sadiq, Bangalore deputy commissioner (urban district), who is a working on the process, explained to The Times of India. The existing wards have a population ranging from 43,000 to 80,000.
With the reshuffling of wards, though the ward name may continue to be the same, ward numbers will definitely change. For instance, if you are a resident of Padmanabhanagar ward number 60, after re-organisation, your road may fall into the neighbouring ward which may be 61 or 62. Which means, your polling booth, revenue office/health ward offices and corporator will be different after the polls.
However, the wards in peripheral areas will have less population with a bigger area as the population in these pockets is currently less, as compared to the wards in core areas, Sadiq added.
Once the government takes a decision on the committee’s recommendations, a draft note will be put up by the urban development department and will be notified for receiving suggestions/objections from people. Subsequently, the final notification will be issued following which the reservation roster will be fixed by the state election commission. The first civic polls of Greater Bangalore are likely to be held by September-October.
kushala.satyanarayana@timesgroup.com
BIGGER CITY
Total area of Greater Bangalore: 741 sq km Population for ward classification: 60 lakh Wards suggested 145, upper limit provided by law 150 Population: 30,000 for wards on the periphery; 40,000 for wards in core areas Area of the new wards: 5 sq km for peripheral wards; 1 sq km to 1.5 sq km for core area wards