Latest news with #GBGAct
The Hindu
17-05-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Brand Bengaluru Committee to propose creating multiple municipal corporations under GBA
The Brand Bengaluru Committee, earlier known as the Bengaluru Restructuring Committee, is gearing up to present three detailed proposals to the State government regarding the creation of multiple municipal corporations under the newly formed Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA). This move follows the official notification of the Greater Bengaluru Governance (GBG) Act, 2024. The committee, chaired by B.S. Patil, held its first formal meeting on Saturday since the Act's notification and began working on restructuring plans. The State government has formally mandated the committee to submit its recommendations concerning the formation of corporations, boundary delimitation, and associated governance structures. The panel is expected to reconvene later this week to continue its deliberations and refine its proposals. The GBG Act was recently notified after receiving the assent of Karnataka Governor Thawarchand Gehlot. As per the notification, the GBA will govern a jurisdiction of 709 square kilometers, matching the existing juridiction of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). However, despite the formation of the GBA, the BBMP will continue to function under the BBMP Act, 2020, until the civic body is officially restructured into multiple smaller corporations. Sources familiar with the ongoing discussions revealed that the committee is considering three governance models: splitting the BBMP into three, four, or five corporations. These options are based on the current population distribution across the city. Although senior bureaucrats had previously prepared a draft for a three-corporation model, the presence of several inaccuracies prompted the State government to seek more accurate and detailed recommendations from the committee. The panel possesses a wealth of demographic and urban data accumulated over years of research on city governance. This data will form the basis for its proposals. Committee members emphasised that their work will be independent, guided solely by empirical evidence and urban planning principles, and free from political or bureaucratic influence. Additionally, the committee will factor in the city's inevitable growth and future expansion as a core part of its planning and recommendations.
New Indian Express
15-05-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
GBA replaces BBMP from today, five corporations likely
BENGALURU: Ring out the old, ring in the new. The state government on Wednesday issued a notification paving way for the creation of Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), replacing the existing Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The GBA will come into effect from Thursday. Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Urban Development Department, Tushar Girinath said from Thursday, the Greater Bengaluru Governance (GBG) Act will come into effect. He stressed that till the reconstitution of various corporations under the GBA is completed, there will not be much change in the functioning of the corporation. 'In the next step, the areas that come under the GBA will be notified. Once that is done, these areas will be further divided as per section 5 of the GBG Act to form corporations. As per the procedure, it will also include issuing notification and calling objections,' said Girinath. To a question on the probable confusion for the city administration, the ACS said, 'Till the time everything is finalised, the existing position of BBMP will continue to function as it was,' he said. The top official also said that there is a provision under section 7 (5) and section 360 of the GBG Act that specifies about the transition. 'All the functions in BBMP will continue till the time of reconstitution of GBA into various City Corporations and GBA kicks in within 120 days from the date of issue of notification,' the ACS said. He added, 'From May 15, we have four months to reconstitute various corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority and till that period, BBMP will continue as per the old rules under the BBMP and KMC Act as long as they are not in contravention to the new Act.' Girinath added that once the exercise is complete, all other Acts like the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act will cease to exist. CM will be chairman of GBA, DCM vice-chairman As per the provisions of the new Act, CM will be the chairman of the GBA and Deputy CM and Bengaluru District In-charge Minister will be the vice-chairman. It is expected that three to five corporations will be formed under the GBA, and an administrator will be the head of all these corporations, individually headed by commissioners. Areas like Anekal, Sarjapura, Chandrapura, Hebbagodi, Kumbalagodu, Belathur, Madanayakanahalli and other outer areas which are under panchayat limits will also fall under GBA, said the sources.
The Hindu
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Karnataka: Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, to govern city from May 15
The Urban Development Department (UDD) has notified that the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, will come into effect from May 15, Wednesday. With this notification, the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, will replace Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Act, 2020, to govern the city administration. However, little will change immediately on the ground, and the transition to the new system will be gradual, through successive government orders, sources in the UDD said. Until the boundaries of multiple corporations, said to be three, are drawn up and notified by the State government, BBMP will continue to work under the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), which is expected to be constituted soon. The GBG Act, 2024, allows for a single corporation as well. The new law provides for multiple corporations (1 to 7 corporations, each with up to 150 wards) and a pan-city level GBA led by the Chief Minister to coordinate between multiple corporations and all the parastatals in the city. 'As an immediate step, the State government has to now constitute a GBA under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister and appoint an administrator to the authority, who will have to oversee the transition,' a senior official said. As per the sources, the Additional Chief Secretary, UDD, is likely to be appointed Administrator, GBA. While the Joint Legislature Committee and the Brand Bengaluru Committee have recommended expanding the footprint of GBA to include around 25 urbanised villages beyond the existing civic limits, initially, GBA is expected to come into force with the same existing civic limits of 709 sq. km, sources said. Parastatals on one platform This will be the first time that the various parastatals in the city, like Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL), Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom), Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Ltd (BSWML), Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Ltd (B-SMILE) and even Bengaluru City Police, among others, will come on one single platform with the civic administration in the GBA. This is expected to provide holistic planning and a coordinated approach to the city administration. However, there are legal steps to be taken to amend the memorandum of associations of the companies and the laws governing some of these parastatals like the BDA and BWSSB to specify that they will henceforth be answerable to the GBA. Without these amendments, GBA will also be toothless, sources said.
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
While govt dithers on implementing Greater Bengaluru Act, BJP moves court seeking polls to BBMP
Bengaluru: The Supreme Court's order to Maharashtra's State Election Commission to notify local body polls within four months Tuesday has offered a glimmer of hope that long-delayed elections to the civic agency in Bengaluru would be held soon. However, the issue is whether polls would be held under the new Greater Bengaluru Governance Act (GBGA) or Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) a bunch of petitions seeking a direction to the govt to conduct civic polls is pending before the Supreme Court, three BJP functionaries — Guatham Kumar, Narayanaswamy (both former mayors) and former deputy mayor S Harish — have impleded with the prayer that the civic polls be held under the BBMP passage of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act (GBGA) has left polls hanging in the balance. Although it is more than 15 days since governor Thaawar Chand Gehlot gave his assent to the GBG Bill and the govt notified it in its gazette, the urban development department (UDD) appears to be dithering on implementing it and is yet to announce the 'appointed day' (from when the legislation comes into force). This has cast a shadow on city civic polls, which have been delayed by more than four years.A senior UDD official explained that, technically, BBMP Act remains in force and that the govt will have to conduct elections to existing BBMP seats if the Supreme Court orders elections immediately. "But we are working to implement GBGA and the appointed day will be announced soon," the official leader of opposition R Ashoka of BJP said he has consulted legal experts and will soon challenge the GBG Act in court. Former deputy mayor Harish claimed the govt "has no intention of facilitating civic elections". "The move to bring in GBG Act is just a ploy to delay elections further. We will bring this to the court's notice," he after GBG Act was signed into law on April 24, deputy CM DK Shivakumar, who holds the Bengaluru development portfolio, had said that he would hold an all-party meeting to discuss its implementation. The objective was to build consensus and pave the way for civic body elections. But Shivakumar is yet to hold that joint house committee that scrutinised the GBG Bill had set a 120-day deadline to implement its provisions once it was enacted. This entails identifying the Greater Bengaluru area, creating new city corporations (up to seven) and identifying new wards within each corporation."We know 15 days have gone by, but steps are being taken by UDD to announce the appointed day," said Rizwan Arshad, Congress MLA who headed the joint house committee. "Procedures to implement the new Act will be expedited. The govt's intention to facilitate elections within four to six months from now will be achieved."
India Today
05-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
How Bengaluru's civic management hit the change button
Eighteen years after it was created to cater to a burgeoning city, Bengaluru's municipal body, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), will now make way for a new system of civic governance in India's tech capital. This transition phase formally commenced on April 24 when the Greater Bengaluru Governance (GBG) Act, 2024 was legislation, passed in March and receiving governor Thaawar Chand Gehlot's assent on April 23, aims to transform the system of governance in Bengaluru by splitting the BBMP into smaller municipal corporations, which would be part of a Greater Bengaluru Authority responsible for city GBG Act was brought in with the objective of decentralising the civic apparatus and to achieve greater coordination among several parastatal agencies that provide various civic amenities in the move had met with some criticism from Opposition parties and civic groups, which argue that it concentrates power with the state government and thereby undermines the 74th Constitutional Amendment's provisions for local self-government. Instead, they recommend strengthening the BBMP and devolving powers that will allow it to function more effectively. The notification of the GBG Act also means that civic polls in Bengaluru, which have been delayed for five years, will likely not happen anytime soon. The term of the BBMP's previous council lapsed in September 2020; the city has been governed by an administrator since then. Now, the civic restructuring means several milestones have to be crossed before elections can be GBG Act requires the government to define the territorial area of the new Greater Bengaluru Authority and constitute the body within 120 days of the Act coming into the BBMP's area of jurisdiction is spread over 786 sq km. The recommendation by a joint legislature committee, which had reviewed the GBG Bill and submitted a report in March, was to redraw this boundary by including peripheral panchayats that have witnessed unregulated urbanisation in recent years.'If you don't regulate it now, it would be a bigger problem. So, we have recommended to integrate all the peripheral panchayats, which are developed now, into the Greater Bengaluru area,' Congress MLA Rizwan Arshad, who chaired the committee, had told INDIA TODAY in chief secretary Tushar Giri Nath, who took over as administrator of BBMP on April 30, said discussions are on about the Greater Bengaluru Authority and the options before the government. For him, the task at hand will be to oversee the transition along with M. Maheshwar Rao, who has simultaneously taken over as the BBMP's new chief the notification of the Greater Bengaluru Authority, the new municipal corporations replacing BBMP will need to be carved out. 'We can do it simultaneously with the Greater Bengaluru Authority or sequentially. Both options are available before the government,' said Giri GBG Act provides for up to seven corporations with a view for future requirements. For now, three or four corporations are seen as ideal. However, achieving a balance among the new corporations in terms of revenue generation, population density and employment opportunities is going to be the key has also been a key concern of citizens' groups opposed to splitting up the BBMP. They have cited the experience of Delhi which, in 2022, reverted to a single municipal body by merging three corporations formed a decade FY25, the BBMP collected Rs 4,930 crore in property tax, the highest in India for the second consecutive year. More than a quarter of this (Rs 1,309 crore) came from the eastern-most Mahadevapura zone, home to a tech corridor. Of the total eight BBMP zones, the east zone came next with property tax collection of Rs 834 crore, followed by south zone with 733.65 crore. The north-western zone of Dasarahalli had the lowest collection of Rs 153 the current fiscal, the BBMP has set an overall target of Rs 5,716 crore as property tax. Karnataka deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar, who is also the minister in charge of Bengaluru, has said he plans to convene an all-party meeting to seek suggestions on the way to India Today Magazine
