A report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has observed that “the mayors of cities in Karnataka are on a weak footing”.
The report of the CAG on the “performance audit” of implementation of 74th Constitutional Amendment Act that authorised State legislatures to enact laws to endow local bodies to enable them to function as institutions of self government, states that “the tenures of mayor and deputy mayor in city corporations and president and vice-president in ULBs are not coterminous with the duration of the municipality”.
Lending credence to the views of some of the urban experts who had demanded a longer tenure for mayors instead of the present one year, the report states that the term of the mayor was too little for bringing in stability and to provide a long-term vision.
The report has been tabled at a juncture when the BBMP Bill is getting ready to be tabled before the State legislature.
The report also observes that there was no community participation in local governance as ward committees were not constituted in any of the city corporations except the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.
“Though district planning committees were constituted in 29 of the 30 districts, meetings were not held regularly, resulting in non-preparation of the consolidated District Development Plan involving matters of common interest between panchayats and the municipalities, the report states.
“Metropolitan Planning Committee, though constituted for Bengaluru area, did not prepare a comprehensive development plan,” the report pointed out.
The functions of urban planning, regulation of land use, water supply and sanitation, and slum development were delivered by parastatals in the State, the report stated. “These parastatals had their own governing bodies which did not include elected representatives of the ULBs. The State did not amend the statutes so as to make the parastatals accountable to ULBs. This infringed on the ability of the ULBs to discharge their mandated functions and undermined the objective of being accountable to people,” the report stated.
It may be noted that the 74th amendment came into effect on June 1, 1993.
