Bengaluru: The new Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), created under fresh legislation to govern India’s IT capital, has come into effect starting Tuesday, replacing the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which has governed the city since 2007.
The legislation divides Bengaluru into five city corporations in an attempt to streamline services, renewing hope of better public infrastructure and improved quality of life for the city’s around 14 million residents.
“From today, the Greater Bengaluru Authority will come into existence. Under the GBA, five city corporations have been created: Bengaluru Central, Bengaluru East, Bengaluru West, and Bengaluru South,” Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said in a post on X Tuesday.
“Based on population proportion, revenue generation, percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, economic importance, and the availability of infrastructure facilities in the area, five city corporations have been established in the Greater Bengaluru region…,” he added.
He also said that positions of senior administrative, police and other official resources have been restructured.
The GBA will replace the BBMP, creating room to expand the city corporation’s boundaries from around 800 sq km to almost 1,400 sq km to include localities, towns and villages on the city’s outer periphery.
But government officials and urban infrastructure experts have raised concerns about this transition, especially regarding the distribution of powers.
“The challenge is how to handle the municipal corporations and the GBA. That means there will have to be a two-tier setup, some powers will have to be vested with the municipal commissioners of the corporation in Bengaluru limits and some of them with the GBA,” said one senior government official, requesting anonymity.
The officer added that some confusion was likely, at least initially, on who gets empowered and whose powers are cut.
The Bengaluru city corporation was India’s fourth-largest civic body. But over the years, it oversaw the steady degradation of the city with crumbling infrastructure, poor garbage management, potholes, traffic and flooding, overshadowing its growth in sectors like information technology, aviation and biotechnology.
Today, Bengaluru has become what many have described as the “template of urban ruin”.
Shivakumar, who also holds the Bengaluru development portfolio, is attempting to change that— but with little success so far.
‘Administrative rejig’
Shivakumar has proposed several big-ticket projects since he took over the Bengaluru development ministry, including an Rs 18,000-crore tunnel road and double-decker flyovers.
But the proposal for the nearly 17-km tunnel road has drawn mixed responses, with at least two government bodies opposing it.
“It’s a reasonable question to ask as to which regional or transport planners are in favour of this proposal?” Ashwin Mahesh, a Bengaluru-based public infrastructure expert, told The Print.
He said planning such projects in isolation leads to traffic bottlenecks in other places. Experts have also raised concerns that a proposal to allow only cars in the tunnel would increase reliance on private transport.
Experts also said that more effort seemed to be going into convincing people to approve the tunnel road rather than completing the metro lines and the much-delayed suburban rail or replenishing stagnating bus fleets.
Bengaluru already has one of the highest vehicle densities, with nearly 1.23 crore vehicles on its congested roads and nearly 2,000 new automobiles registered every day.
One reason to split the BBMP was that smaller administrative units would help achieve better and more efficient governance.
But therein lies another problem: a severe shortage of senior officials. While the authorised strength of additional chief secretaries (ACS) in Karnataka is 16, the actual number is around six. Similarly, there are shortages in the principal secretary cadre as well.
For instance, Anjum Parvez is ACS to the chief minister and heads the forest department. Tushar Girinath doubles up as the ACS for urban development and home affairs. Gaurav Gupta is the ACS for energy and also personnel affairs.
But the government has said that it will be able to provide all officials required by the GBA.
Shivakumar said Monday that senior officers with extensive administrative experience would be appointed as commissioners for the five corporations formed under the GBA.
‘Appointments should be merit-based’
The BBMP had 16 IAS officers, two IPS officers and 19 KAS (state administration) officers and one deputy superintendent of police, who have all now been reassigned.
The GBA will be headed by a chief commissioner, an IAS officer of the rank of principal secretary and above. The BBMP has not had elections for its council since September 2020 and is being run by the state government and officials.
The GBA will also transcend zonal boundaries, emphasising better coordination between multiple civic agencies like sewerage, water pipelines and road works.
“It is not clear yet on the areas that commissioners will have autonomy to take decisions or in which aspects they will lose power since the erstwhile BBMP will be divided,” the officer cited above said.
R.K. Mishra, startup investor and urban affairs expert, said that just appointing officials isn’t enough, but they also have to be empowered.
“There are issues like ongoing projects across the city being done by different divisions and departments. How will these ongoing projects be tendered and monitored?” he said.
Mishra added that zonal commissioners were not empowered, which blunted the administrative zeal required to tackle such issues. He also alleged that corruption was widespread in the administration.
Between 2013 and 2023, the Bengaluru city corporation allegedly spent Rs 43,600 crore, with nearly Rs 25,000 crore of this earmarked for “improvement”, “resurfacing”, “relaying” or “asphalting” roads, data shows.
“If at all the huge grant of Rs 46,300 crore released for the development of roads by the greater BBMP in the last 10 years had really been put to good use, 1,980 km (of roads) under the jurisdiction of the BBMP and pavements of long highways would be paved with gold plates,” N.R. Ramesh, a former corporator and former BJP president of the Bengaluru South district, said in a complaint submitted to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in December.
Mishra remains sceptical about whether Bengaluru’s problems will be resolved.
“It all depends on what kind of officers are posted. What political message goes out? We don’t know if these will be political postings or merit-based,” Mishra said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Also Read: L&T exit aside, Bengaluru’s suburban rail dream faces another big hurdle—shinier big-ticket projects