BANGALORE: BBMP Mayor Sharadamma wants to see more women from grass-root level join politics and prove their mettle. Speaking to Express about her plans for the city before ending her tenure as Mayor, she talked about her achievements, politics and more.
Your tenure will end in another one-and-a-half months. What is your contribution to the city’s growth?
One year term for Mayor is too short for any person to deliver good work. Half of the year goes in understanding the city. And the rest of the time passes in figuring out the alternatives to provide a good and sound administration. But in this one year, I have come out clean in my administration.
But the public have suffered. BBMP is not implementing the development works as expected and there is a debt of `700 crore too. If this debt is not cleared, the BBMP’s accounts will be frozen. Is this the kind of administration which your party will be proud of?
We have done enough to stop the leakage of funds. I would call a meeting and direct the officials to speed up development works. And about the debt part, the State government has released about `100 crore for the city and we will ask it to bail out BBMP from the debt.
During the oath taking ceremony, you had said that you would tackle water crisis which is haunting the city. And also make Bangalore garbage-free. Has that been realized?
We now have invited tenders for garbage collection. In a week’s time, we will get to know who has bagged the contract. As far as water woes are concerned, Bangalore has witnessed exponential growth.
But the ground water is being exploited for commercial purposes at the cost of general public. What will you do to curb this practice?
Firstly, we will conduct surprise inspections to catch hold of the culprits who take illegal water connections and secondly, all our councillors will discuss the issue with commercial water suppliers to coordinate with BWSSB and the BBMP to supply water during summer.
The plan to implement the rain water harvesting (RWH) project was made compulsory to all the elected representatives before December 31, 2011, but you have failed to implement RWH is your own house.
Yes. I agree, we have crossed the deadline. Even in my house, we have not implemented it. I have asked the concerned people to take notice and get the project done.