Bengaluru's new civic map: Why five city corporations were carved out

India Today

5 days ago

Back in 2008, Bengaluru's rapid urbanisation called for a re-ordering of the city's municipal governance structure, leading to the creation of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). In one shot, the city's civic body went from managing 251 sq km to a sprawling urban area just under 800 sq km.This expansion took place by amalgamating large peri-urban areas and villages that were managed by city municipal councils and village panchayats, the goal being to ensure the delivery of civic amenities in outlying areas, which witnessed frenetic growth.advertisementSeventeen years later, the BBMP is soon going to be a thing of the past. On July 19, the Siddaramaiah government put out a draft notification for splitting the civic body into five new corporations, under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act (GBGA), passed by the legislature in March, paving the way for a new experiment in Bengaluru's governance.With the stated goal of decentralising governance and improving city upkeep, the GBGA envisages a new structure in which several independent municipal corporations will each manage smaller zones while an overarching Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), with jurisdiction over their cumulative area, will be responsible for overall city planning and coordination.
The GBA has been conceived as a platform that would bring together various parastatal agencies that currently provide key amenities, such as water supply, power and public transport. Currently, these agencies work in silos.The GBGA has been opposed by Opposition parties. The BJP argues that it will alter the city's ethos and character and be detrimental to the native Kannada-speaking population. There's also opposition from civic activist groups, which argue that the legislation violates the intent of local self-government built into the 74th Constitutional Amendment by concentrating power with the state government.It's a charge that the Congress dispensation rejects, maintaining that the creation of multiple new corporations was meant to decentralise governance as opposed to an unwieldy BBMP.In carving out the five new corporations, the key criterion was to balance revenue from property tax between them, explains V. Ravichandar, member of the Brand Bengaluru Committee that worked on the subdivision. The GBGA stipulates a minimum of Rs 300 crore annual property tax revenue and a population of one million for each new corporation.Ravichandar points out that wide disparity in property tax collections was one of the pitfalls the committee was wary of, owing to the experience of Delhi which, in 2022, reverted to a single municipal body by merging the three corporations formed through a trifurcation. 'The Delhi experiment failed because of the wide disparity in property tax and the absence of a GBA-like authority,' says Ravichandar.advertisementIn Bengaluru, the main challenge was to bring down the disparity between the eastern and western parts of the city. 'East [Bengaluru] has a low population and high property tax while the west has a high population and low property tax revenue,' says Ravichandar. This is because the eastern zone of Mahadevapura comprises the city's bustling technology corridor, which has one of the highest concentrations of Fortune 500 companies in the world. 'Bengaluru's citizens land up in the East to work but don't necessarily live there. There are a lot more residences in the West and, therefore, the property tax is lower there,' he adds.In the event, the Bengaluru East City Corporation is projected to collect an annual property tax of Rs 912 crore and manage a population of 1.3 million while Bengaluru West City Corporation, with a population of 4.5 million, will likely earn a tax revenue of Rs 580 crore.Projected property tax collections between the other three entities range between Rs 733 crore in Bengaluru South City Corporation, Rs 659 crore in Bengaluru Central City Corporation and Rs 543 crore in Bengaluru North City Corporation. They will oversee populations of 3 million, 2.5 million and 3.1 million, respectively.advertisementThe GBGA has also built in a clause for the state government to provide grants-in aid to city corporations in case of a resource gap.'Bengaluru grew exponentially over time and just spread across. Every area of the city, be it east or west, north or south, has inherently different issues and challenges. It isn't a uniform issue everywhere,' says Congress legislator Rizwan Arshad, who chaired a joint legislature committee that reviewed the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill before it was enacted.'The idea was to restructure into smaller administrative units and at the same time make them autonomous yet coordinated,' adds Arshad, calling the GBA a new model of urban governance in the country.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends