Urban experts call for expansion of civic limits to include urbanised villages

The Hindu

3 days ago

While there has been general concurrence among urban planners and experts on the way the city's civic limits have been divided into five corporations , many argue that the municipal limits should have been expanded to include areas beyond today's civic limits that are urbanised.
'We seem to be trying to solve yesterday's problem and not tomorrow's. We are confronting this problem because we did not anticipate this years ago. We still do not seem to be addressing a ground reality that most of the new migrants into the city are settling outside the civic limits, urbanising those areas,' said urban expert Ashwin Mahesh, arguing for four more corporations beyond the civic limits, all to be brought under the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA).
GBA has been notified to be the BBMP area only, with a promise to be expanded at a later stage. Initially, there was a proposal to include at least 25 urbanised villages beyond the civic limits in the GBA. However, that was put on hold. Sources said while GBA will be expanded, areas beyond the civic limits may be municipalised or kept under zilla panchayats and their representatives be given a seat at the GBA.
Given the disparity in revenue generation capacity of the five corporations and the role of the Chief Minister-led GBA to bring in a balance through State grants, N.S. Mukunda of Bengaluru Praja Vedike, said that there was a need to develop a comprehensive ward development index which becomes an impartial and transparent yardstick to allocate funds.
'A corporation that may need money may elect an opposition party to that in power in the State, and this can create a situation where that corporation may be starved of funds and development. We should ideally avoid such situations. If an impartial development index becomes the yardstick, we can hope to achieve some balance over the next few years,' he said.
Mr. Mahesh also said that given the wide disparity in area and population of these corporations, delimitation of wards will end up with unequal wards, a problem that already plagues the city. He said each corporation should be allowed to have its own delimitation exercise to ensure equal representation within that corporation.
However, others oppose this argument. 'According to the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, each corporation can have a maximum of 150 wards. To bring parity in the larger GBA area, we can ensure a corporation with a smaller population will have a lesser number of wards and those with a larger population more wards,' an official said.