Time to give Bangalore back to its people

Time to give Bangalore back to its people

Over two years ago, Bangalore's Municipal Council's term ended. Since then the seats have been left vacant. Now, the chief minister has decided to hold BBMP elections this August. DNA delves into the reasons for the delay, and finds out if citizens need to elect a mayor too

Basavaraj Itnaal. Bangalore



It has been two-and-a-half years since the term of the Bangalore's last municipal council ended and the government has been postponing elections. Notwithstanding any legal battles brought by former mayor PR Ramesh, the government offered various excuses to delay the polls: The expansion of municipal jurisdiction to Greater Bangalore; Dr K Kasturirangan committee report on reforms in metropolitan governance; delimitation of wards; and alterations to delimited wards. Now that the chief minister BS Yeddyurappa has stated his intention to hold Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) polls by August, Bangaloreans can hope to have their own city government.
RTI activist, JN Jayashree, feels the polls would mean higher accountability at a municipal level. "The officialdom is under direct control of the government, and it is not directly accountable to the people. The polls would enable citizens to elect a corporator to represent their ward who would be accountable to him," she said.
For former mayor, Mumtaz Begum, the city has "gone to the dogs" without an elected body. "Whenever there is no elected body, the officials become corrupt. They are not accessible to the people, nor are they answerable to them. When we have a constitutional arrangement where the official machinery is answerable to the people's representatives, we must not delay elections," she said.
But is it practical to hold polls in three months, given the changes to the system being envisaged? The erstwhile BMP had 100 wards and the new BBMP would have 147 to 150 wards. The Kasturirangan report recommends reforms, not just at the BBMP level (an area of 800 sq km) but also at metropolitan level (an area of 8,000sq km). More than six statutes need amendment and two new Bills have to be introduced.
Law and urban development minister, S Sureshkumar, is sure that it can be accomplished. "We are studying the Kasturirangan report and we can bring all the statutory changes in before August. The most important change we are looking at is to have a directly elected mayor," he said.
The petitioner before the HC, former mayor PR Ramesh, however, is sceptical. "I have sent contempt notices to the government for not keeping its word to the HC. When they have not done anything so far, I don't think they would do anything in the next three months either," he said.
Then why is the government saying that it can?
"It is just perception management. The CM merely wants to appear to be moving in the right direction. There had been no official meeting to deliberate on the Kasturirangan recommendations," said Ramesh.
Former chief secretary, Dr A Ravindra, said that an attempt was being made to realise the goals of the Kasturirangan report. "Holding elections to the BBMP is a constitutional mandate and no one should ask whether officials can run the BBMP better, or an elected body. If officials are averse to the common man's concerns, we must sensitise them," he said.
Another former mayor, R Narayanswamy, agrees on the increase in corruption in the absence of an elected council. But he does not believe that having a directly elected mayor is a good idea. "If we have a directly elected mayor for five years, he may develop autocratic tendencies. In case the mayor is changed every year, he may try to perform better than his predecessor. Moreover, when MPs elect prime ministers and MLAs elect chief ministers, why at the third tier of government should we have a directly elected head of government?" he asked.
Delimitation of wards
After the BMP became the BBMP its jurisdiction expanded to 800 sq km from 226 sq km. This exercise, taken up in January 2007, included 110 villages, apart from seven city municipal councils and one town panchayat in the BBMP. The electoral unit of city government is a ward and BMP had 100 of them. Every ward is represented by a councillor. To account for newly-added areas and to rationalise existing wards, the delimitation of wards had to be done.
Bangalore urban district administration carried out the exercise and came up with a redrawn ward map for Greater Bangalore. It proposed 147 wards, but there were concerns that a ward may be shared by two assembly segments. After removing this anomaly in the delimited wards, the government published a draft notification last August. The final notification has yet to come through. The government handed over the road leading to BIAL along with a 500 meter strip on either side of the road to the BBMP and this is yet to be accounted for in the delimited wards. It is likely that the final tally of wards may go up to 150.