The story so far
The Karnataka government has put out a draft of the new delimited 225 wards with their names, boundaries, and printed maps calling for objections from the public. Repeated demands to publish digital interactive maps of the proposed wards and to allow objections to be filed online have fallen on deaf ears this time too, making the process cumbersome.
While it is hoped that this draft is the culmination of a long process that began in 2019 and saw multiple iterations owing to allegations of political bias, inaccuracies, lack of equitability, and a regime change, this is also likely to be challenged in court, sources said.
Beginning of delimitation process
The last time wards in the civic body were carved out was in 2008 when Bangalore City Corporation was expanded into Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), to include 110 villages and several city and town municipal corporations. In 2019, in the run-up to the civic polls scheduled to be held in 2020, Bengaluru’s ward delimitation process began.
As outer zones in the city, the newly added areas to BBMP, have seen exponential growth over the past decade and a half, there was no parity between wards in outer zones and the core city. While outer zones had large wards both in terms of area and population, the core city had more wards of smaller areas and population.
The ward delimitation exercise is aimed to set this right. In 2019, with the number of wards frozen at 198, Assembly constituencies within the Outer Ring Road (ORR) were supposed to lose 17 wards and outer zones were all set to gain 17 wards to help their ward sizes to be on a par with those in the core city.
Even as the city council’s term ended in September 2020, right amidst a raging pandemic, holding civic polls and delimitation of wards took a back seat. Over two years have gone by with the civic body administered by bureaucrats.
From 198 to 243 wards
As the elections were delayed, two former councillors, Abdul Wajid and M. Shivaraju, of the Congress, filed a petition before the High Court of Karnataka seeking early civic polls. The State Election Commission (SEC) then went to court citing an inability to hold polls due to delay in completing the delimitation exercise and fixing the reservation list of wards.
In December 2020, the Karnataka High Court ordered the SEC to hold elections to the existing 198 wards within six weeks of the government publishing the reservation list. Days later, the State government passed the new Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act, 2020, which increased the number of wards from 198 to 243.
The High Court, however, ruled that the polls must be held in the existing 198 wards, which was opposed by the State government in the Supreme Court. The apex court gave a stay on the High Court order, providing an opportunity for the BJP-led State government to come up with the newly carved out 243 wards.
Political wrangles
Amidst allegations that the erstwhile BJP government was misusing the ward delimitation exercise to delay civic polls, the State government notified the delimitation of 243 wards in September 2022. Based on the 2011 census, the civic body claimed they had carved out 243 wards of roughly 34,700 population each.
However, this notification was opposed across party lines. Senior Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy had then alleged that the delimitation exercise was carried out in “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) offices”, targeted not only opposition parties and benefitted BJP, but also minority pockets which were divided in such a way that their votes do not carry a great say in the election results.
The Congress also contended that the number of wards in Assembly constituencies represented by Congress had dwindled, even as the number of wards in constituencies represented by the BJP had shot up significantly.
Multiple Congress leaders, including Chamrajpet MLA B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan, challenged the delimitation notification in the High Court. Even Bommanahalli BJP MLA Satish Reddy challenged it in the High Court contending that wards have been delimited in such a way that they were spread across Assembly constituencies.
These challenges essentially delayed the civic polls till at the 2023 Assembly polls in May, which is what MLAs cutting across party lines wanted, several former city councillors allege.
Regime change
In the Assembly polls held in May 2023, Congress won a handsome victory and came to power. The Congress had opposed the BBMP Act, 2020 brought in by the BJP which it described as “a missed opportunity” and had promised to bring in governance reforms including splitting the civic body into multiple corporations, which they had initiated in their earlier tenure in 2015, but couldn’t implement as the courts had mandated immediate elections then.
Even as the Congress government reconstituted the BBMP Restructuring Committee, it sought to buy time to bring in a new Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, split the civic body into multiple corporations and hold elections.
However, in June earlier this year, following the representation by the State government that it was inevitable for it to redo ward delimitation to correct errors in the earlier notification, the Karnataka High Court set a 12-week deadline to redo ward delimitation and fix the ward reservation list.
From 243 to 225 wards
Given the lack of elbow room to delay civic polls further, the State government decided to de-link governance reforms and civic polls, sources said. This essentially meant that the city would miss its date with reforms yet again, as in 2015. Following this, senior minister and Bengaluru city MLA Ramalinga Reddy announced that civic polls will likely be held in December 2023.
The first step the government took after this was a notification to reduce the number of wards in the civic body to 225 from the earlier 243. The minimum number of wards the civic body must have as per BBMP Act, 2020, is 225.
On August 18, the Urban Development Department issued a draft notification of these 225 wards. The average size of a ward has risen from 34,700 in the older draft to 37,527 in the new draft.
Given that the State government has used the 2011 census as the basis for ward delimitation, the new wards are already outdated on arrival. While as per the 2011 census, the city’s population was 84 Lakh, the extrapolated population for 2023 is 1.32 crore.
ECI norms
Appeals to consider the latest electoral rolls for the delimitation exercise were rejected, because as per the Election Commission of India norms only the latest general census can be considered for the exercise. Given an inordinate delay by the Union government in starting the decennial census scheduled for 2021, the latest census data available is only of 2011.
Moreover, the reduction of 18 wards compared to the previous draft mostly comes in the Assembly constituencies represented by the BJP, drawing the party’s ire. Given the spatial distribution of the BJP and the Congress in the city, most core city Assembly constituencies are represented by the Congress and most of those in outer zones by the BJP.
Outer zones
The reduction in the number of wards has also come in the outer zones, which had large wards and the whole delimitation exercise was to make them more equitable with wards in the core city.
It is also the outer zones that have seen an explosion of growth over the last decade.
Considering the 2011 census and reduction in the number of wards compared to the previous draft, though the number of wards has increased compared to the 198-ward setup, the latest delimitation would have left the wards in the outer zones still larger in terms of population than those in the core city.
This is likely to draw challenges from the BJP, which has alleged political bias. If they go to the court, the entire delimitation saga will be back to square one for the second time.
