The ongoing delimitation exercise is likely to increase the number of wards in some zones, albeit marginally. The residents of Whitefield, Mahadevapura and other areas coming under Mahadevapura Assembly constituency have objected to the exercise, terming it unscientific as it is based on 2011 census data.
Members of Whitefield Rising Trust, a group of residents’ welfare associations from the area, recently submitted their objections to Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, Additional Chief Secretary of Urban Development Department E.V. Ramana Reddy and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner B.H. Anil Kumar.
Whitefield Rising has urged the government to make “scientific demarcation that is amenable to governance and representation and which can follow best practices to allow administration and budgets for an area that is critical to the growth of the state’s economy and country.”
They maintained that as per the census, the population of Mahadevapura Assembly constituency is around 4.31 lakh. However, the number of registered voters is around 5.24 lakh.
That apart, the average area of wards in Mahadevapura far exceeds 10 sq.km. whereas wards in the core city area are about 1 sq.km. The eight wards under Mahadevapura constituency are spread over 115.23 sq.km.
“The large area of the constituency and wards pose a great challenge to local governance and, in effect, flout Article 74 of the Constitution,” they said, and argued that Mahadevapura needs at least 30 wards to make local governance and representation realistic.
According to Srinivas Alavilli from Citizens for Bengaluru, this problem is not restricted to Mahadevapura. “The experiment of forming BBMP has failed spectacularly. The proof is in the garbage problems and inadequacies in civic infrastructure. The delimitation exercise, unfortunately, is taken up for politics instead of efficient delivery of services,” he said.
Urban expert V. Ravichandar, who was a part of the BBMP Restructuring Committee, had a similar view, and made the case for decentralisation. “A mega BBMP is impossible to manage. We need multiple zones with empowered zonal commissions, zonal committees and zonal budgets,” he said.
BBMP's Special Commissioner D. Randeep, who is in charge of Mahadevapura and Bommanahalli zones, admitted that the number of wards may not increase much, and may continue to remain big and unmanageable. “For better administration and delivery of services, the wards can have more officials. This, however, is at the discretion of the government,” he said and added that the Commissioner had already appointed zonal commissioners. “The next logical step is zonal budgets, which will take into account local requirements,” he said.
