MY CITY MY VOTE

MY CITY MY VOTE

Aarthi R | TNN


OLD OR NEW? WARD NAMES CERTAINLY MATTER Bangalore: There’s nothing to ‘ward’ off one’s affinity for those old names. And a ward means more than just municipal limits and civic amenities for these residents. What matters more to them — being under ward names that can be heard!
Objections to the draft notification for ward delimitation has some interesting observations to make, alongside those stark contrasts in beliefs. Here are just two to sample.
Pottery Town
The town is more than 100 years old. Presently, its inhabitants have little to feel happy about the place, in civic terms. Bad roads, poor sanitation, clogged drains, leaking water lines, schools with broken gates and irregular garbage collection... the list of woes is unending.
There were more than 200 signatures in a letter submitted to the urban development department on June 24. All for a separate ward for Pottery Town.
The hitch is that Old Pottery Town comes under a relatively new ward, SK Garden, which many don’t know about, although it’s more populated. “Pottery Town has greater historic prominence and better identification because of its age-old pottery business. It makes more sense having S K Garden under it,” ex-corporator Pradeep Kumar Reddy told TOI. Presently, Pottery Town is part of Pulikeshinagar along with surrounding areas like SK Garden, Gandhigrama, William’s Town, Vedarahalli, Wahab Garden, ITI Layout and NC colony. However, with the new ward delimitation, these areas are likely to be bifurcated and split into SK Garden, Pulikeshinagar and DJ Halli. Jayanagar 7th Block
Members of Jayanagar 7th Block Residents’ Association are also unhappy with the proposed ward delimitation, which deletes their area from the existing Yediyur ward, and adds it under Karisandra (a new ward).
Residents feel if Jayanagar 9th Block has been provided with a separate ward, then why not 7th Block too? The objection filed by the association on June 25 explains its unwillingness to be part of a new ward, which was just a village a few decades ago, and not extensively heard by the public either.
“Karisandra has none of the credentials of our area,” the association said. “This includes being ‘highly civilized’, good number of taxpayers as well as literates,” an association member said. TNN