Bengaluru: Citing difficulty in managing a growing city, the state government on Monday gave its nod to increase the existing BBMP zones from eight to ten. The decision has been taken on the basis of recommendations of the BBMP restructuring committee, headed by Mr B.S. Patil with former BBMP Commissioner Siddaiah and urban expert V. Ravichandar as members.
Compared to the existing system where some BBMP zones have assembly constituencies ranging from two to ten, the slicing will ensure that each zone will have two to four assembly constituencies.
Mr K.A. Hidyatulla, deputy secretary, Urban Development Department, issued an order for restructuring. In the order, Mr Hidyattulla stated that because of uneven geographical spread of each zone, it was leading to disparity in collection of taxes, fund allotment and garbage disposal. The order stated that the ten zones will have ten zonal commissioners of KAS cadre, 10 chief engineers for each zone and other senior officials.
Existing East, West and South zones will be replaced with Malleshwara, Gandhinagar, Sarvajnanagar, Jayanagar and Vijaynagar zones, while the existing Yelahanka, Dasarahalli, Mahadevapura, Bommanahalli and RR Nagar zones will retain its names.
Welcoming the decision, BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad said that the new order will become functional in a matter of a month or two. The recruitment of staff and identifying new office spaces will begin immediately, he said.
Civic evangelist and member of the B.S. Patil Committee, Mr Ravichandar said that decentralisation is where the future lies. "With more zones, citizens can expect better services. In the present setup, wards aren't scientifically split with population in each ward varying from 25,000 to one lakh. Decentralisation of power is the future to manage rapidly growing cities," he said.
Zonal change
- One Mayor
- One Commissioner
- Present structure has 8 Joint Commissioners for 8 zones
- New structure will have 10 zones with 10 JCs to head it
New zones and their Assembly constituencies
MALLESWARAM ZONE: Malleswaram, Hebbal, Pulikeshinagar, Shivajinagar
GANDHINAGAR ZONE: Gandhinagar, Chikkapete, Chamarajpet, Basavanagudi
VIJAYANAGAR ZONE: Govindarajanagar, Vijayanagar, Rajajinagar
RAJARAJESHWARINAGAR ZONE:Rajarajeshwarinagar, Mahalakshmi
layout
YELAHANKA ZONE: Yelahanka, Byatarayanapura
DASARAHALLI ZONE: Yeshwantpura, Dasarahalli
SARVAGNANAGAR ZONE: KR Puran, Saravgnanagar, CV Raman Nagar
BOMMANAHALLI: Bommanahalli, Bengaluru South
MAHADEVAPURA ZONE: Mahadevapura
JAYANAGAR ZONE: Shanthinagar, BTM Layout, Jayanagar, Padmanabhanagar
BS Patil Committee recommendation
While the state government gave nod for one of the recommendation of the commiittee, the other main recommendation was to split BBMP into 5 smaller corporations. All the five smaller corporations and other civic agencies BMTC, BESCOM, BWSSB and BDA will be functioning under Greater Bengaluru Authority which will have a elected Mayor for a term of five years.
