Bengaluru: In its report to the Karnataka government Monday, the Greater Bengaluru Governance Committee—a joint legislature panel—recommended setting up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to implement big-ticket infrastructure projects, potentially giving wings to Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar’s vanity projects.
It also made recommended that Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the city’s civic body, be divided into as many as seven smaller corporations. If the recommendations are implemented, it could further divert power away from city corporations in Bengaluru, where the city council elections have been delayed for five years.
The SPV puts big-ticket projects under the Greater Bengaluru authority, eliminating the need to wait for individual approvals from various city corporations once the BBMP is divided.
“Under the greater Bengaluru authority, there will be a provision to set up an SPV, which will take up tendering work of any project that overlaps with the corporations,” Rizwan Arshad, Congress MLA and committee chairman, told ThePrint.
The Greater Bengaluru Governance Committee was set up to study the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024, to decentralise the city’s civic body for, what the Karnataka government said was, better and more efficient governance.
Shivakumar, who holds the Bengaluru City Development portfolio in the Karnataka Cabinet, has proposed a flurry of big-ticket projects to help revive its “glory”.
The 62-year-old deputy chief minister has gone as far as to announce that cash-strapped Karnataka government will invest Rs 1 lakh crore into improving traffic and living conditions in Bengaluru, including several projects that he has personally advocated for such as a Rs 42,500-crore 40-km-twin tunnel road, Rs 18,000-crore double-decker flyovers, and about 320 km of buffer roads costing around Rs 5,000 crore.
Over the years, Indian cities have become very congested, and the urban infrastructure has barely kept pace. Despite becoming a hub for several industries, such as IT, aerospace, and startups, Bengaluru has become the poster child for unregulated growth. Shivakumar hopes that these multi-billion dollar projects will decongest the city.
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‘Unregulated growth’
Bengaluru accounts for more than 40 percent of India’s total software exports and contributes a little over one-third of Karnataka’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), but activists, former corporators (representatives of its city council), and experts say corruption and apathy have held the city and its residents at ransom.
On Monday, former Infosys chief financial officer T.V. Mohandas Pai panned the Karnataka government for the state of Bengaluru.
He was responding to a post from Karnataka Information Technology Minister Priyank Kharge, listing out the many economic achievements of the city.
Minister @PriyankKharge We know all this, but tell us – what have you done as our Minister to improve our lives? You have not even ensured the city is clean with no potholes and good footpaths! This is not rocket science but regular maintenance work. Pl talk to Minister… https://t.co/v1ewx3GrAf
— Mohandas Pai (@TVMohandasPai) February 24, 2025
The city also faces near incessant flooding and scarcity of drinking water as rampant encroachment of green spaces, lakes and water bodies continues unchecked.
According to data procured by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporators, between 2013 and 2023, the BBMP spent Rs 43,600 crore, of which nearly Rs 25,000 crore was earmarked for “improvement,” “resurfacing,” “relaying,” and “asphalting” roads.
Corruption in the municipal body has also been a major issue. In June last year, some BBMP officials came under the scanner for raising Rs 118 crore in fake bills in just one assembly constituency of Bengaluru. The urban development department is also still probing allegations that Rs 1,500 crore were raised in fake bills between 2008 and 2012.
“The (Greater Bengaluru) bill must incorporate the vision of an effective, accountable and autonomous city government that is relatively free from state government control, which would make Bangalore a far more livable city for its residents,” Srikanth Narasimhan, founder & general secretary of the Bengaluru Navanirmana Party said.
The SPV, however, is likely to facilitate the creation of new subsidiaries for the execution of big-ticket projects, which is likely to further strip the city corporations of their powers once the bill is passed. “No MLA, whether from the Congress, BJP or any other party, wants to hold BBMP elections. They are doing all they can to delay elections to push all bills related to the city without an elected council,” a former corporator said, requesting anonymity.
Bengaluru has not had an elected council for nearly five years now, leaving its fate in the hands of the state government and officials.
The term of BBMP’s last elected council ended in September 2020, and ever since, successive state governments have shown no interest in conducting these elections.
In the absence of an elected council, the state government has pushed to increase the number of wards, redraw constituency maps and introduce other policies that come under the purview of the city council. Arshad said BBMP elections are likely to be held by August. But dates for the elections have been pushed forward several times in the past as well.
Expanding Bengaluru & native populations
The latest Greater Bengaluru Governance Committee report also recommends that the mayor’s term be increased from 11 months to 30 months. The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government tabled the bill in August last year. At the time it proposed the division of the city into as many as 10 smaller ‘city corporations’ in the Greater Bengaluru Area.
It reasoned that the earlier acts to govern the city were “inadequate and did not institute any mechanisms to address the fragmentation of governance in the city due to the multiplicity of civic agencies and the lack of coordination between them”.
But the bill was then sent for further deliberations under multiple committees.
The latest draft of the bill, likely to be tabled in the upcoming budget session of the state legislature, recommends ways in which multiple corporations can work on improving conditions within its boundaries. “BBMP is 875 square kilometres, and it is difficult to manage the city. In the last 18 years (when Bengaluru expanded by about 500 square km), development could not be streamlined due to unregulated growth,” Arshad said.
Meanwhile, Shivakumar and other ministers have also proposed to expand the city to include regions like Bidadi, Kankpura, and Ramanagara on the southern border. This has led to fears that the native population may become a minority in some soon-to-be-carved-out wards as many localities have a higher number of migrant populations.
Arshad said that the redrawing of ward maps will become inevitable since the delimitation exercise is scheduled to take place before 2028.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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