BBMP leads in ward numbers, lacks in quaility service

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has eight zones and 243 wards

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Ward committees in the city are witnessing a gradual increase in their popularity and have turned out to be consistent in the past six months, revealed a study undertaken by Janaagraha, a Bengaluru-based NGO. It has found that between September and December last year, out of the 1,864 ward committee meetings that were mandated as per law, the city’s civic body conducted 1,553 meetings.

According to Janaagraha’s assessment, only over 1,170 meetings were held during September 2021 to April 2022. No other major city in the country has such effectively functioning ward committees. This has been made possible by the BBMP Act 2021, which took the place of the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act currently holding jurisdiction over all corporations in different cities of the state while also providing for ward committees.

 In the capital, ward committee meetings are ideally supposed to take place once every month, on the first Saturday at 10 am in the ward office. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has eight zones and 243 wards. Each ward has close to a population of 40,000 – 50,000 people and a corporator to each ward is elected in every five years.

Every ward has officers of its own – from engineers to health inspectors, who are responsible to provide services to the citizens under their wards. According to Janaagraha, during the review period of September to December, 388 meetings were held per month on an average across the wards of BBMP. All the wards managed to conduct at least two meetings during the four months.

The maximum number of ward committee meetings, 417, was conducted during the month of October 2022, the study noted. Dasarahalli, East, Mahadevapura, Raja Rajeshwari Nagara, South and Yelahanka were noted to be the highly performing zones while Bommanahalli, West was classified as a partially performing zone. About 57% of the total wards have conducted all the eight meetings in the quarter months.

However, only a few wards have been successful in uploading proceedings of the meetings regularly on the BBMP website. While the quality of the ward committees still requires an upgrade, the quantity has certainly increased.

However, it is important to note that many wards do not conduct ward committee meetings as Bengaluru does not have an elected body since September 2020 when the term of the BBMP ended. In the absence of elected corporators, BBMP has appointed nodal officers. In certain cases, even nodal officers have not been appointed or trained, leading to the committee meetings not being held.