The three-month respite given by the Karnataka High Court to redo delimitation of wards in the city has breathed a fresh lease of life on the government’s plan to bring in governance reforms, including splitting the civic body into multiple corporations.
Though the State government reconvened the BBMP Restructuring Committee led by B.S. Patil, which had recommended splitting the civic body into five corporations with 400 wards in 2015, it was feared that if the court orders immediate civic polls, the reform agenda may be derailed.
“As long as we hold civic polls within a stipulated time, the courts are not against reforms to the system. So, time is the essence now to implement our governance reforms. We feel a single civic body is unmanageable and the civic body needs to be split into multiple corporations for better administration. We will hit the ground running now,” said a senior city Congress MLA.
New law, the way ahead
The only way to effect the changes the ruling Congress is championing is to bring in a new law to govern the city, replacing the BBMP Act, 2020, brought in by the BJP. The Congress manifesto for the 2023 Assembly polls also promised a new law to govern the city.
In fact, the BBMP Restructuring Committee had come out with a Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill in 2015, which is reportedly being tweaked for today’s needs. “If worked on a priority basis, the Bill can be tabled in the upcoming session of the State legislature,” a senior government functionary said. But the State Cabinet is yet to take a call on this.
The tweaked Bill reportedly operates like a modular Bill without stipulating the specifics of the number of corporations and wards, providing much elbow room for the State government to decide on these specifics and effect them through executive orders. The Bill reportedly provides for municipal corporations in the city to be in the range of 1-10 and doesn’t specify the number of wards. However, multiple sources in the Congress said the government is keen on splitting BBMP into three corporations.
The 2015 Bill provides for a decentralised three-tier governance structure - a strong empowered ward committee, a zonal committee headed by the zonal commissioner, and a Mayor-in-council at the corporation level. Over this, the Bill provides for a Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) with a jurisdiction of Bengaluru Metropolitan Area (BMA) and will include heads of all parastatals, Mayor, elected representatives, among others, with BDA as its secretariat.
The Congress manifesto promised something similar: An agency under which all parastatals will be brought. Over this, will be the constitutionally mandated Bengaluru Metropolitan Planning Committee (BMPC) at the regional level with Bengaluru Metropolitan Region as its jurisdiction and BMRDA as its secretariat and chaired by the Chief Minister.
