It is only now, 25 years after the 74th Constitutional Amendment, that the opportunity to serve as ward committee (WC) members and bring in transparency and accountability in urban governance has been opened up to service-minded urban citizens of Karnataka. Until now, the power to nominate ward committee members was somehow unthinkingly given to councillors who filled them with their own cronies, defeating the very purpose of having effective citizen participation at ward level.
Though the elected representatives had the power to form the WCs, the BBMP Council showed its apathy towards citizen participation by not forming the ward committees even two years after the fresh Council was formed in 2015 and even after the High Court ordered at the end of April 2017 (in the case relating to garbage management and ward committees) that the ward committees should be formed within one month.
All this changed when, in another hearing of the case, the practice of asking councillors to nominate the WC members was questioned by CIVIC on the ground that, as per Section 13H(2)(b) of the KMC (Amdt.) Act of 2011, the Ward Committee members are to be “nominated by the Corporation”, which means the Municipal Commissioner and not the councillors. As a result, the High Court gave an oral order that not more than two or three names should be chosen from the councillor’s list and that applications / nominations by citizens should also be considered.
Citizens who have, so far, felt helpless and disempowered due to the lack of transparency and accountability in BBMP’s functioning at ward level, need to grab this golden opportunity and immediately submit applications to the BBMP Commissioner (by June 17th) to occupy the 1980 positions now available to them across the 198 wards. This order has filled several citizens’ groups with enthusiasm about the roles they can play as ward committee members in planning, monitoring and auditing works of BBMP.
The Court’s order has motivated citizens in other municipal corporations, who have never seen ward committees so far, to also start demanding ward committees in their cities and bring in a new era in urban governance in Karnataka.
– Kathyayini Chamaraj Executive trustee, CIVIC
