Come May 15, the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act 2024 will come into effect even as the Karnataka government will declare the existing Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) as the Greater Bengaluru Area.
While the expanse of the GBA will remain 709 sq km, there will be a restructuring of the civic body to have a three-tiered governance system – a Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) chaired by the Chief Minister, which will be assisted by an executive committee, multiple City Corporations (with a five-year-term), whose functioning will be coordinated by the GBA and ward committees (each corporation may have up to 150 wards).
The GBA will be headed by the Chief Commissioner (appointed by the state) and will comprise senior bureaucrats, and ex-officio members from different state departments. The corporations will have their own Mayor, Council, and Commissioner and the ward committees will consist of elected councillors and citizens.
Even as the ruling Congress claims that the new law would decentralise power and make service delivery more efficient, the opposition parties have alleged that the Chief Minister chairing the GBA violates the principles of the 74th Amendment as it concentrates power with the CM and not the elected councils.
The state government has the power to dissolve a city corporation if it finds the civic body 'incompetent'. The civil society groups have also raised concerns over the centralisation of power and overlapping of functions which may further reduce efficiency and accountability.
The members of GBA – Bengaluru development minister, state minister from the constituencies, MPs and MLAs, Mayors of corporations, commissioners, and heads of various agencies will have voting rights. This is feared to violate the principle of separation of powers between the legislature and the executive.
While, all the corporations will continue to collect property tax, advertisement fee, tax on professions and trade, entertainment tax, cess on infrastructure and SWM, and taxes related to building licenses, they will be provided grants by the state government on failing to raise funds.
The property tax rates will now be fixed by the state governments and this could deprive the corporations of their fiscal autonomy. The dilution of the powers of mayors will also violate the spirit of self-governance, warned experts.
Meanwhile, the inordinate delay in holding the civic body elections has led to the gross neglect of the IT city, which is buckling under crumbling infrastructure like potholed roads, debris and trenches of the slow-paced civil works, traffic hassles, garbage crisis, and deficient service delivery system. The term of the last BBMP council ended in September 2020 and the corporation polls have since been deferred citing delimitation and reservation matrix.
Bengaluru Townhall- a citizens’ collective is preparing to challenge the Act in the Supreme Court.
