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Bangalore: Govt favours trifurcating Palike to ease things

With 198 wards, commissioner is over-burdened:Suresh Kumar

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As the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike is failing to tackle problems such as garbage and water shortage, the state government is leaning towards a proposal to divide the civic body for more effective functioning.

Chief minister Jagdish Shettar and A Ravindra, his advisor on urban affairs, said at a recent seminar that such a division was needed to make the civic administration more responsive and effective.

According to Suresh Kumar, minister for law and parliamentary affairs, although there had been no move in this direction, such ‘loud thinking’ comes out of the experience of managing an ever-growing city, he said.

“There has been a quantum jump in its size. When I was corporator, we had about 87 wards. This went up to 100 and almost doubled to 198 wards now. It is too big to be handled by a single corporation,” he said.

“Our BBMP commissioner has to take 198 calls every day from the corporators. Apart from responding to the calls, it is difficult for him to have a fruitful conversation. Bangalore needs smaller corporations either along the lines of three parliamentary seats of Bangalore North, South and Central or in any other suitable arrangement,” he said.

Although there are joint commissioners for each zone, this arrangement has not been successful since everyone is dependent on the headquarters for work to be done.
“We have to decentralise governance,” he said.

Smaller municipal corporations will help people and the corporation in administrative matters, said Ravindra.

“With smaller areas, more attention can be devoted to them. Moreover, right now, whether it is Wilson Garden or Bommanahalli, people have to travel all the way to the headquarters if they want something to be done. Proximity will be an advantage and so will decentralisation be,” he said.

Key is decentralisation
According to Suresh Kumar, when the city was consolidated to form the BBMP, “We did not understand the gravity of the situation that we were going to face. The answer to our current problems is decentralisation. Dividing the BBMP into more than one along with ward committees in each of these corporations will help in managing the city better,” he said.
Ravindra said there was no discussion or debate before the BBMP was formed.
“A lot of problems could have been avoided if there was proper discussion before the BBMP was formed,” he said.

Such mistakes should not be repeated.

“Before we can take forward the division, we need to discuss and debate and see what people want. We need to prepare a detailed proposal to the government and this needs to be further discussed before any action is taken,” Ravindra said.

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