BENGALURU: The Karnataka cabinet on Thursday discussed the need to go to court seeking the postponement of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike elections to facilitate delimitation of BBMP wards. Law and Parliamentary Affairs minister JC Madhuswamy said that a final call on delimitation to redraw and increase the number of wards under BBMP will be taken on Friday in a Joint Select Committee meeting.
The government is considering proposals to increase the number of wards from the existing 198 to 225 with each ward consisting of an average population of 40,000 to 42,000. “The government’s thinking is that the number of wards needs to be increased.
If elections have to take place after the delimitation process then we will have to approach the courts to request that BBMP elections be postponed. Since BBMP’s (Council’s) term ends by the end of this month, we will approach the courts before that,” said JC Madhuswamy.
The Cabinet also discussed the need to increase the number of zones from eight to 15. “More regions will be brought under the BBMP while increasing the number of wards. BBMP zones will be increased to 15 and areas will be marked under each zone.
One Commissioner will be appointed for each zone,” Maduswamy said. The joint select committee will consider proposals to apply geographic area as well as population density as parameters for redrawing of wards. “There are suggestions that parameters should be flexible to accommodate densely populated areas like Basavangudi or Gandhi Nagar, or sparsely populated regions where the geographical region will be huge,” the minister added.