BENGALURU: Around 3,000 people from various localities of the city came together and walked from the Vidhana Soudha to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) office to campaign for building a better Bengaluru, which is called Bengaluru 2.0. B.CLIP Alumni Association, Citizen for Bengaluru (CfB), CIVIC, Maanava Foundation, Nisarga Seva Foundation, Humanity Foundation, Anvaya Foundation and Social Sarkar led the walkathon with a common goal of achieving better governance for the city.
Residents from localities like Nandini Layout, HAL Airport, Yelechenahalli, Doddabommasandra, Bommanaha and Shivajinagar who took part in the campaign demanded that the powers of ward reservation and delimitation be delegated to the State Election Commission from the state government.
Announcement of ward reservation must be made at least six months before BBMP elections and the tenure of the mayor should be increased to 5 years, they said.
Their demands also included transparency in the formation and functioning of ward committees, effective running of metropolitan planning committee, increase in the honorarium of BBMP corporators and use of technology to bring in transparency in the administration. Ravichander, urbanist city planner said, “The group has said no to business as usual or incremental changes. We are hungry for transformation. A mix of deep decentralisation and smart integration with an empowered BBMP is the need of the hour. We must also ensure we empower ward committees.”
Jayalakshmi Karthik, senior functionary of B.CLIP Alumni Association said, “We are really happy about the turnout for the walkathon as people from every nook and corner of the city joined us. This clearly establishes that the entire city agrees to our demand for giving more power to the BBMP. ”
Srinivas Alavilli of CfB said, “A big part of the problem of Bengaluru comes from the gap in governance. A dynamic city needs dynamic governance. When citizens and politicians collaborate to look at issues honestly and make transformative changes, everyone wins.”