BENGALURU: Hundreds of citizens who eagerly waited for the ward committee list were in for a shock. Because hardly one or two names of citizens made it to the list, while the rest were filled by cronies of corporators. Citizens for Bengaluru is ready to prove it.
Mr Srinivas Alavilli, coordinator of Citizens for Bengaluru, said, "We have incontrovertible proof that recently announced ward committee list for 67 wards is just a sham and is made up of cronies of corporators."
He said, "Even a casual glance of the lists shows clearly that husbands of various women corporators and party workers have been selected carefully by clearly avoiding active citizens."
In the ward committee list of BBMP ward number 30, K.G. Halli, which has 12 members, including corporator Nausheer Ahmed and its Assistant Engineer, citizens have found out that there were at least three Congress workers - Ms Parimala, Mr Narayana Yadav and Mr Amjad Khan. For all those who want to know how the citizens found this out, they dug out photos of these workers actively canvassing for Congress candidate Nausheer Ahmed during the 2015 corporation election.
At BBMP ward number 106, Dr Rajkumar ward, which is held by corporator Roopa R., her husband Lingeswar figures in the list. The residential address for both the ward committee members is the same in the list. Also, in Padarayanapura and Chaluvadipalya, the slots reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have been left vacant, he said.
"Citizens are shocked as this has happened again as earlier we had raised objection to the list of 131 ward committees. Mayor Padmavathi and Commissioner Manjunath Prasad had assured us that citizens would be part of ward committees. But our expectation of more citizen-centric and inclusive committees has been rendered false," he said.
"The list has been prepared according to the whims and fancies of politicians by suppressing democracy. We demand that the BBMP should cancel lists of all the ward committees,” he said.
