The issue of splitting up the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) into smaller corporations, under some pretext or the other, has cropped up on a number of occasions in recent times. Only that, this time it's more than an academic exercise – a split definitely seems quite on the cards.
What is, however, ironic in the ongoing babble over the pros and cons of a possible trifurcation of the BBMP is that many have changed opinions as times have changed.
In January 2013, at a seminar on “Reorganising Bangalore municipal area into two or more municipal corporations” organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, then Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar had favoured bifurcation / trifurcation, saying, “Unfortunately, when the BBMP was formed, there was no public debate as such. There is a need to bifurcate or trifurcate the palike for better administration. However, there is a need to take opinion of elected representatives, public and urban experts before acting towards the same.” His party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is tooth and nail against the move of Shettar's successor, Siddaramaiah of the Congress, to split the BBMP.
According to reports, the idea during Shettar’s stint had come from former BBMP Commissioner MK Shankarlinge Gowda, who had written to the government, emphasising on the need to bifurcate the BBMP. S Suresh Kumar, minister for law and urban development, held a few meetings and assigned the responsibility of working out the pros and cons to A Ravindra, urban affairs advisor to the chief minister.
Ravindra and others were said to have favoured bifurcating the BBMP, each unit comprising 100 wards. One division would be the original cluster of wards that constituted the erstwhile Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP). The other would be a conglomeration of one town municipal council and seven city municipal councils and 110 villages. Matters did not make much headway then.
The BJP's plans faded away when it lost power in the state, and the agenda was taken over by the Congress. The BJP had promised a "restructuring" of the BBMP in its 2013 poll manifesto. The Congress had been more explicit by committing to "review the exisiting size and quantum of BBMP jurisdiction and organise it into administratively viable units." So, when state minister for law and parliamentary affairs TB Jayachandra, while moving the Karnataka Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2015, said that this had already been promised by his party two years back, he was not wrong.
The issue kept wafting in and out of public discourse for a year till the state government constituted a three-member expert committee to look into a possible restructuring of the BBMP in September 2014. Around the same time, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) formed a 10-member committee, including several former mayors, to look into the possibility of splitting the BBMP. Headed by KPCC general secretary BL Shankar, the panel delivered in two months. It favoured trifurcation – the old Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) region (core Bengaluru) to be considered Bengaluru Central, while zones added in 2007 would be split into two – Bengaluru South and Bengaluru North.
In the meantime, the expert committee, comprising former Chief Secretary BS Patil, former BBMP Commissioner Siddaiah, and member of the now-defunct Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) V Ravichandar, made relatively slow progress. In a preliminary report in December 2014, it remarked, “While the original GO (government order) spoke about a BBMP division, in the light of the focus on BBMP restructuring, the committee decided to keep an open mind on all possibilities including one where the decentralization exercise covered only administrative decentralisation. The initial meetings with stakeholders indicated that most were in favour of multiple corporations with political devolution and administrative decentralisation…. However, the committee felt that we should hear all stakeholder viewpoints about the pros and cons of having multiple corporations before arriving at a decision.”
The expert committee has not exceeded its brief, which had been clearly laid out by the state government: “the government has decided to divide BBMP in order to improve the ease of administration and to provide basic amenities / facilities to the people. But before that, government has decided to appoint an expert committee, ensure that the committee submits the report within stipulated time, get public opinion based on the report and make an appropriate decision.”
In its second report, said to have been hurriedly stitched together in view of the developments in the High Court pertaining to the BBMP elections, the committee was more emphatic, “At this point of time we believe we could consider: eight municipalities (16-20 lakhs; 120-140 sq kms) and each municipality having two zonal councils (8-10 lakh population; 60-70 sq kms each). The exact number of municipalities and zonal councils will be set out by end June 2015 based on a spatial analysis of multiple parameters including revenue potential, infrastructure indices, population demographics, etc.”
Within three months, the panel seemed to have made up its mind. It wrote in no uncertain terms, “One thing is certain. In the view of the committee, the BBMP in its current form has no place in the revised structure. In its place, there should be a new set of municipalities in the second tier to be governed by incorporating modifications in the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Act, 2011.”
The committee is working on a three-tier city design. At the Tier-III level would be ward-level governance and administration systems, while Tier-II would be the 5-8 multiple municipal structures. The Tier-II and Tier-III arrangements will work only if there is a regional layer that integrates all the civic activities and takes responsibility for planning and administration of the region’s activities. The panel invoked the Constitution (74th Amendment) Act, 1992 which mandates a Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) that plans for the regional area to be specified by the state government. Two thirds of the MPC Council needs to be drawn from elected representatives in the region which is possible from the Tier-II municipalities. The committee is working towards a Greater Bengaluru Authority.
The report said, “The primary functions of the regional authority will be planning, plan enforcement and administration. The proposed Greater Bengaluru Authority could be headed initially by the Chief Minister. Since the state has had a major role in the city for decades and will need to oversee proper utilisation of grants for designated purposes, it is suggested that the state continues to play a role in steering the new arrangement at the regional level. Over time, as the system matures, Bengaluru could go in for a directly elected ‘metropolitan mayor’ for the Greater Bengaluru Authority, and this person could head the MPC. There is currently no legal arrangement at the state level for managing a Metropolitan region. A new Bengaluru region Act will be needed to enable these functions.”
An Act is on the anvil. Time will tell whether it will split hairs.
