A civic body at last! Bengalureans breathe easy

After a long wait of five years, Bengalureans must have definitely heaved a sigh of relief with the Supreme Court on Monday asking the Karnataka government and the state election body to hold the long pending civic polls in Bengaluru by June 30. Bengaluru has been without a corporation since 2020 when the term of the last BBMP council ended. The BBMP elections were last held in 2015.

For five years, city residents were forced to run from pillar to post to get their grievances redressed with officials ruling the roost. They were at the mercy of the civic bureaucracy when it came to resolving serious problems including road infrastructure, drainage issues and land related approvals. Such bottlenecks are bound to happen in a city which has suddenly expanded in the past two decades ever since 110 villages were added to the BBMP in 2007.

The city is now around 720 sq km large and with the division of BBMP into five new corporations, administration has largely been decentralized. This decentralization also means that civic elections will have to be held to five civic bodies. This will make it easier for corporators and officials to rush to the assistance of citizens in case of an emergency. However the modalities of holding elections to five civic bodies instead of one, will have to be drawn up, including the number of corporators each body will have. Issues like the reservation matrix and redrawing of ward boundaries if needed, will also have to be trashed out.

According to Bengaluru in-charge minister and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, the government would also like to hold the taluk and zilla panchayat polls which will mean a massive revamp of civic administration in the state. The contest is no doubt going to be fierce for the civic bodies of one of the most prestigious cities in the country with talk doing the rounds about the BJP and Janata Dal(S) which are in an alliance, likely to engage in friendly contests this time.

While it is still too early to make predictions about the poll outcome, the results could be considered by many as a litmus test of the performance of the Congress government in the past three years. The BJP leader in the Assembly R Ashok, who represent a city constituency, has already started harping on the poor city infra including pothole-ridden roads and the Opposition parties are likely to make this a prime issue as the poll dates draw near. Whoever wins, one hopes Bengaluru gets a set of responsible and civic-minded corporators who will not mind making sacrifices to ease the woes of city residents.