Who should administer Bangalore city?

Who should administer Bangalore city?

Staff Reporter
ABIDe comes out with blueprint for people to analyse it and come out with suggestions best suitable for the city
— Photo: G.R.N. Somashekar

Preserving heritage: The blueprint has made a suggestion to restart the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission to oversee aspects of environment, heritage and city aesthetics.
Bangalore: Who should administer Bangalore? A Mayor directly elected by the people or a Mayor-in-Council having non-elected specialists and elected corporators?

The Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development (ABIDe) Task Force, in its blueprint on “Govern Bangalore”, has suggested the adoption of either of the two systems for the administration of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

The suggestion for Mayor-in-Council system is an alternative to the recommendation of the Dr. Kasturirangan Committee, which had recommended only a directly elected Mayoral system for the city.

It is also proposed to enact a single legislation that can be called Bengaluru Region Governance Act (BRGA) for both the Bangalore city under BBMP and the Bangalore metropolitan area under the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) covering nearly 9,000 square kilometres. This again is a minor modification of Dr. Kasturinagan report which had proposed separate legislation for the BBMP and the BMRDA areas.

ABIDe’s attempt is to give a choice to the people so that they analyse them and come out the suggestions that is best suitable for the city, says A. Ravindra, former State Chief Secretary and member of the ABIDe, who authored the blueprint Govern Bengaluru along with ABIDe convenor and Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar. The BRGA will have to define rolls and duties of various agencies like the BBMP, BMRDA, Planning Authorities, etc. The ABIDe also proposes to merge the BDA with the BMRDA to avoid duplication of planning function.

Nature of development
A new concept called Neighbourhood Areas (NA) is being proposed and each ward has to be delineated into specific NAs each of which represents layouts, colonies, etc. The concept is to empower the citizens and allow them to participate in the nature of development of their neighbourhood. Each Neighbourhood Area Committee should have right to approve or veto a specific set of issues like land use conversion, commercial development, etc., that impact their neighbourhood area.

The blueprint also proposes that each ward should have a minimum one municipal service centre per 5,000 persons. The Ward Committees headed by respective corporators need to be created as proposed in the Article 243S of the Constitution which has not been implemented properly so far.

Flawed system
Pointing out that the present maintenance contracting system is leaky and flawed, the Govern Bengaluru proposes multi-year contracting system and involvement of those who have ability to arrange external finance and not depend on city financing alone.

On transparency and accountability, the blueprint suggests that all ward offices should have public disclosure boards.

It should be mandatory for all agencies related to city affairs to disclose details of contracts, land use conversions, approvals for building plan, details of new projects, orders, etc., on their websites and on the disclosure board of the respective the ward offices.

User pay model, provision for infrastructure cess, solid waste management charges, differential tariffs for different services levels, new models to raise revenues from higher income neighbourhood areas, etc are also proposed in the blueprint.

The blueprints made suggestion to restart the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission, which was dissolved about eight years ago, to oversee all aspects of environment, heritage and city aesthetics.