As Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is on an expansion mode, serious deliberations are on at the government level to shut down the authority in its present form and reinvent it as an infrastructure agency.
Recommendations to shut down the BDA are not new. The first recommendation was made in the Kasturirangan Committee report in 2008. The latest deliberations on the future role of the BDA began after the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Restructuring Committee also made recommendations to reinvent the BDA. Interestingly, the Kasturirangan committee and the restructuring committee had the former BDA commissioners A. Ravindra and Siddaiah as members, respectively.
The BBMP Restructuring Committee in its report recommended abolition of the BDA board and making it answerable to the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), a body with elected representatives in majority. The committee recommended retaining planning function with the BDA and stripping it of its regulatory and housing functions.
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The committee has recommended that the BDA be reinvented as an infrastructure agency, with all the major projects divisions in the BBMP shifted to the BDA, and the authority renamed as planning and infrastructure cell of the GBA.
‘Details have to chalked out’
BDA Commissioner T. Sham Bhatt has said the State government is likely to take a call on the BDA when it also implements the BBMP Restructuring Committee report on dividing the civic body into five entities. “There will be changes to the functions of the BDA, yes. But the details and the pros and cons of such changes have to be chalked out,” he said.