It is demanded that the government must give wide publicity to the bill and invite citizens, urban experts, and civil society organisations to contribute to improving the bill.
Published Aug 11, 2024 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 11, 2024 | 9:00 AM
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. (Wikipedia Commons)
The Greater Bengaluru Governance (GBG) Bill tabled in the Karnataka legislative assembly on 23 July amid stiff opposition has been referred to a House Committee for scrutiny.
The bill proposed splitting the BBMP into smaller corporations, which would be governed by a Greater Bengaluru Authority.
The government claimed that the proposed reforms are required for the better administration of Bengaluru. Activists, however, disagreed, claiming the bill just does not incorporate many progressive aspects of governance necessary for building a vibrant, modern Bengaluru in the 21st century.
An earlier version of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill was proposed by the Brand Bengaluru Committee (BBC-GBG) in 2014, after the state government had constituted the BBMP Restructuring Committee, later renamed the BBC in 2024.
The BBC was tasked with designing a new and modern governance structure for Bengaluru to retain its preeminent position. Accordingly, the committee prepared a draft bill.
The differences between the old and the new bills are vast. To critically assess them, Janaagraha — a non-profit working towards bettering life in cities — undertook an in-depth comparative analysis of the GBG Bill and the BBC-GBG Bill.
Janaagraha based the analysis on the City-Systems framework it had developed. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act (BBMP), 2020, which is currently in force, and the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (KMC) Act, 1976, were also considered.
The four bills/acts were evaluated based on 33 parameters and were scored on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score, the better the performance of the bill/acts.
According to the authors of the study, the GBG Bill scored poorly across all four city-systems components including urban planning and design, urban capacities and resources, empowered and legitimate political representation, and transparency, accountability, and civic participation.
Overall, the GBG Bill scored a dismal 3.35 out of 10. The study revealed that the GBG Bill was less than half as effective as the BBC-GBG Bill.
Srikanth Viswanathan, CEO, Janaagraha, said the expectation that the GBG Bill would usher in a progressive governance model, which could facilitate significant improvement in different aspects of people’s lives, has been betrayed with the tabling of a very limiting bill.
It was also disappointing to note that the government chose to ignore many of the desirable recommendations of the Brand Bengaluru Committee.
“The emphasis on planning is completely missing in the version presented by the government to the Assembly. Second, there is far better clarity and coherence concerning mayors and councils in the case of the BBC-GBG, but the version presented in the Assembly is extremely confusing and does not empower the mayor and council,” he told South First.
“The ward committees and the degree of transparency are extremely weak in the government’s version of the Bill,” Viswanathan added.
Key misses in the bill that are crucial for a city like Bengaluru were no provision for a metropolitan mayor, no mayor-in-council, no ombudsman, no empowerment over staffing decisions, no oversight over finances, the council cannot approve the municipal budget, and provisions missing for effective ward committees, etc.
Santosh Nargund, Head – Participatory Governance, Janaagraha felt the government could still salvage the bill.
“Now that the Bill is referred to the House Committee, the government must give wide publicity to the bill and invite citizens, urban experts, and civil society organisations to actively contribute to improving the bill, before adopting the same,” he said.
“In the larger public interest, it is important for the government to treat this exercise as a collaborative initiative and not as a unilateral political move,” he added.
(Edited by Majnu Babu)
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