Bengaluru: With LS elections over, the old subject of splitting Bengaluru civic body into five parts is back on the table in the government, as all eyes turn towards the long overdue civic polls. Home Minister G Parameshwara spoke about this on Wednesday as the city, with its ever growing population, is sinking under its own weight.
“We were contemplating splitting the Bengaluru corporation even back when I was the in-charge minister [in 2018]…If you look at London, they have so many councils. We want effective administration to take place, and that is why we are contemplating the split,” he said.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) governs a population of about 13 million right now, over about 741 square kilometers. The reconstitution is expected to be along the recommendations made by the BBMP Restructuring Committee formed in November 2014, during Siddaramaiah’s first tenure as the Chief Minister. The BJP, which was in opposition then, had vehemently opposed the bill and it had been shelved.
The three-member committee chaired by retired IAS officer BS Patil, was reconvened in June last year. The committee had also proposed the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill in 2018, which recommended restructuring the city’s governance by establishing multiple Municipal Corporations within the city in a three-tier framework. The structure was to have empowered ward level committees under the corporations, which would all come under a greater Bengaluru authority.
The idea of a split had divided responses. Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw took to social media platform X, posting that it was “an imperative bill to transform the functioning of our growing city.” There is speculation, however, that the Congress regime may have revisited the topic in order to try and improve its chances of winning at the city level, after losing all the four LS seats in the city to the BJP.
The BBMP elected Council’s term had expired in September 2020. Ward delimitation exercises and reservation disputes have pushed the polls forward. In January this year, Shivakumar, who holds the Bengaluru development portfolio, had said that the civic body’s polls would be conducted soon after the Lok Sabha elections.
