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BBMP wards reduced to 225 ahead of local polls
In a step towards holding long-overdue elections for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the state government recently issued a revised ward delimitation notification for the urban local body.
In a significant step towards holding long-overdue elections for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the state government, in a notification issued on Friday, revised the ward delimitation for the urban local body.
The previous notification of 243 wards was withdrawn, and a fresh one was issued by the Urban Development Department (UDD) under the BBMP Act, 2020, reducing the number of wards to 225.
The move comes shortly after Transport minister and Bengaluru MLA Ramalinga Reddy announced that elections would take place in December.
The recent notification cites Section 7 of the BBMP Act 2020 which empowers the government to revise the number of ward boundaries.
On the basis of government order, the delimitation committee – headed by BBMP’s chief commissioner Tushar Girinath – is expected to start the fresh process of delimiting wards on the basis of Census 2011.
In all probability, the number of wards – which went up in the outlying wards during the last delimitation exercise – is likely to be reduced to match the 225 figure.
Following a high court order, on June 20, the Congress-led state government was granted a period of 12 weeks to redraw the delimitation process.
The state government in July last year, notified the number of wards at 243.
However, the earlier delimitation, initiated by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which increased the number of wards from 198 to 243, was strongly opposed by the Congress.
The Congress alleged that the delimitation was designed to favour the saffron party.
Meanwhile, Ramalinga Reddy had said that the BBMP elections would be held in December this year. “In our indoor meetings CM [chief minister] and DCM [deputy chief minister] have said that elections will take place in December,” he said.
The Congress government had formed a committee to decide on conducting civic elections, comprising Reddy, former Mayors G Padmavathi and PR Ramesh, MLAs NA Haris and Priya Krishna, and Ministers Dinesh Gundu Rao, Krishna Byre Gowda, and Byrathi Suresh.
With inputs from agencies.
