While the city stinks and its brand image takes a beating, our leaders are busy playing the blame game. To get to the bottom of the mess, Express asked the city legislators why they were silent over the problem and what they had done to solve it.
While they said they had held awareness programmes and campaigns to overcome the problem, legislators of all parties were quick to shrug off the blame and point fingers at others.
While Congress legislators blamed the ruling BJP and its leaders, BJP MLAs held the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and corporators responsible.
While the contractors, mayor and commissioner came under flak from most of them, some even blamed the citizens for the mess.
Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy, in turn, expressed an inability to get work done from his employees “as most of them were those on deputation from various other departments”.
Sources admitted that the BJP councillors were feeling let down by their party legislators as the latter had refused to take responsibility. Amid all this, Chief Minister Jagdish Shettar, under whose direct control the BBMP works, failed to take decisive action because of political compulsions, observers say.
A BJP legislator, on condition of anonymity, told Express that city BJP legislators were divided. While some owe allegiance to former CM B S Yeddyurappa, others have identified with Shettar. “Had all BJP legislators sat together, the issue would have been sorted out long ago,” he added.
Meanwhile, the city’s failure to tackle the problem made international news with The New York Times on Friday publishing an article on the state of affairs. Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said “we have to clean up the act” if the city hoped to salvage the Brand Bangalore image. “If we put everything in the government’s lap, we can’t expect anything,” she said.