400 wards, multiple corporations: Committee submits ‘Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill’

The three-tier system involves the creation of ward committees at the lowest rung, a set of municipal corporations above it that are governed by the Greater Bengaluru Authority. According to sources, the Bill provides for the creation of up to 10 municipal corporations but the Bill does not specify a particular number. It will likely be placed in the next Cabinet meeting to take a call on whether to introduce the Bill in the upcoming session of the state legislature starting July 15.

The Committee under retired IAS officer B S Patil made a presentation in the second week of June when Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had convened a meeting with MLAs from Bengaluru. Following the meeting, Congress MLA Rizwan Arshad had said that the BBMP was not a ‘scientifically structured organisation’ and had to be restructured to address concerns over civic administration in various parts of the city.

The first draft of the Bill was submitted to the government in 2018 by the Committee. It was reconvened in June 2023, as the Congress government continued to pursue its proposal to divide the BBMP into smaller corporations falling under a Greater Bengaluru Authority.

The Bill, if passed, will increase the number of wards in the city from the existing 225 to 400. The 225 wards were notified in September last year.

The previous BJP government had carried out a delimitation exercise in 2021 and had notified the creation of 243 wards in the city. Elections for the BBMP are due from 2020 with activists raising a hue and cry over the delay.