Citizens can now be part of the exercise undertaken to restructure the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)… with just the click of a mouse!
The BBMP Restructuring Committee has developed an app where citizens can select wards to be part of a zone. The committee is proposing 12 zones, instead of the current eight, for better administration.
Committee member and civic expert V. Ravichandar pointed out that the current zones are not tenable for the future, as they are not scientific and the zonal characteristics vary significantly. There also is no balance in the zones in terms of the property tax collections, area, population etc. “Clearly, there is a case to rethink the zones. Through this app, citizens can create the zones by choosing contiguous wards,” he said.
He said that through trial and error, citizens can try to balance the zones in various parameters. Ideally, the area of each zone should be around 70 sq km and with a population ranging from eight to 10 lakh.
Explaining how the app works, he said that the 12 proposed zones have been colour coded. After selecting the zone, the user can click on the wards. After the wards are selected, a table at the bottom of the page shows the wards that have been selected for each zone, the Assembly constituencies in each zone, population and area of the zone, property tax, number of dry waste collection centres in each zone, number of government schools, police stations, fire stations and bus stops.
“Irrespective of the number of corporations to be formed, it is imperative that there are 12 zones. Once the number of corporations is decided, the zones can be equally distributed among them. This way, there will be equitable distribution of resources. The problem with the three corporations in Delhi is that they are not balanced, either in terms of area or property tax,” he said.
The app is available on the BBMP Restructuring Committee’s website (www.bbmprestructuring. org). Citizens can save their version of 12 zones and send it to the committee.
