BENGALURU: While the Urban Development Department has issued the draft notification to split Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) into five corporations, civic experts and former corporators opine that the division was “unnecessary” and has been done in a way that the city will see skewed development, and claim that the split didn’t focus on language and culture. They note that Bengaluru East Corporation is carved out in a way that the area has the highest revenue collection, while other corporations are nowhere near. The area is predominantly populated by non-Kannadigas, who they believe will not understand local Kannada and culture.
Founder member of Bengaluru Praja Vedike NS Mukunda said, “The split has only laid the foundation for more problems. Instead of splitting the city into five corporations, the existing eight BBMP zones should have been doubled to 16, with a commissioner heading each zone. This would have made the administration easier.”
Bengaluru East, being the highest revenue generator, will plan and implement multiple projects and schemes, and corporations like West will barely be able to run the show, Mukunda said.
Echoing Mukunda’s views was former Leader of Opposition in BBMP and BJP leader NR Ramesh, who said, “East’s revenue will be over Rs 2,000 crore, while Central’s will be over Rs 250 crore, West will end up last with Rs 200 crore. North’s revenue will be over Rs 1,400 crore and South’s revenue around Rs 600 crore.”
Ramesh predicted that if this split becomes a reality, Bengaluru will face Delhi’s fate, where the national capital was trifurcated in 2012 and couldn’t sustain due to multiple problems, and was again merged into one in 2022.
Both Mukunda and Ramesh say the corporations were carved out without considering ‘soft issues’ like local language, culture of the land, ethos, and said, “Look at Bengaluru East, the corporation is carved in a way that the area is dominated by non-Kannadigas, and locals become a minority. This, in the coming years, is sure to create a lot of clashes and problems.” Mukunda recalled that the key factor on which the states were divided as per the State Reorganization Act 1956, was language and culture.
Mukunda said he will be officially registering his opposition, and added that pro-Kannada outfits will also do so before the deadline for registering opposition. Ramesh said he will challenge the BBMP split in court, and produce the Delhi model as support.
Civic activist Sandeep Anirudhan said, “It’s a bad idea to split a city into multiple corporations. Especially under this unconstitutional scheme of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, where there is an unconstitutional state government-controlled Greater Bengaluru Authority which can overrule all of these (five) corporations. It is not devolution, but centralisation. It’s over-centralisation in the garb of decentralisation. It is a lie this government is peddling to the public.”
Both Anirudhan and Mukunda said the reason for Bengaluru’s mismanagement doesn’t lie in whether there is one or many corporations; it lies in the fact that the 74th constitutional amendment has not been followed for the past three decades, and there are multiple parastatals and departments catering to Bengaluru, which do not come under the corporation but directly report to the government.
“Every delimitation is fraught with faulty boundaries, because these are not done transparently with public participation. All boundaries are carved up by politicians in their backroom machinations, for electoral or other considerations, not with public welfare in mind,” Anirudhan said.