City: Bengaluru

A typical scene from BBMP Council meets during afternoons. Pic: Shree D N It's a meeting that is supposed to discuss the development works that must happen in your ward, every month. Your own representative, who is a councillor, better-known as corporator, is supposed to attend it and participate in it on your behalf. What if you come to know that the one whom you chose to do this job did not even attend the meetings? Or if you come to know that the person faked his attendance and went elsewhere to do his other works? List of councillors having…

With the Supreme Court extending the deadline for conducting Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) election by four weeks, the State Election Commission (SEC) is now preparing to arrange a fresh poll schedule for civic body in Bengaluru. S Honnamba, Secretary of State Election Commission, told Citizen Matters that in accordance with the Supreme Court order, the SEC will conduct the polls before August 28th. “Though initially there was confusion about eight weeks time granted by the Court, now the ambiguity is cleared. We have cancelled the schedule of events for BBMP polls that we had announced earlier. We are yet…

Subways are typically built so that pedestrians can cross over from one side of the road to the other, without having to risk their lives by meandering their way through traffic. Subways in Namma Bengaluru are another matter altogether. Some of them are used as public toilets and reek of urine. They get waterlogged after a heavy downpour. And being dimly-lit, many people avoid then for their lack of safety. Well, the Bangalore Underground Project looked to changed that. Last year, Bangalore Rising and BBMP came together to clean six subways near Cubbon Park and KR Circle. And the effort did…

The fourth hearing of the complaint on debris and garbage under the Namma Metro lines, filed by Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) came up for hearing in front of Upa Lokayukta Subash B Adi on July 3rd. During the hearing, B.PAC submitted over 100 photographs showing the debris, construction waste and garbage still lying in the median of Namma Metro, despite the Upa Lokayukta’s previous order to the BBMP to clean up the mess. B.CLIP participants and other B.PAC volunteers conducted a daylong exercise on July 2nd, visiting the Metro line to check the status of the same. At South…

  Bengaluru this week July 2nd 2015     CITIZEN MATTERS Bangalore's own interactive newsmagazine Speak up, it's your city!     It is game time in Bengaluru with the State Election Commission declaring BBMP elections. If all goes according to plan, the city may just have a new BBMP council by this time, next month. For the next couple of weeks, Citizen Matters will be presenting an in depth coverage of the elections - the latest news and updates, who is contesting from where, and much more. Keep a track of our special BBMP Elections coverage. Here are the top…

Long-pending demand of the electoral roll experts to introduce a software to trace electoral roll anomaly has been finally paid heed to. With the BBMP polls is less than a month away, the State Election Commission has come up with a special software to detect errors in electoral rolls including duplication, repetition of voters names with same photograph etc. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner G Kumar Naik who is in-charge of BBMP polls, said that the software has detected discrepancy in over 35,000 cases in BBMP election voters list. During cleaning up exercise using the software, duplication, incomplete details,…

A few weeks back, while writing about Vibhutipura lake, I spoke with Shubha Priya of VIKAS, a citizens' group associated with the Vibhutipura lake. She pointed out a few interesting facts about the lake, which I missed out on during my previous visits. The idea for composing this essay originated from my interaction with her. As I had observed in my previous essay, Vibhutipura Lake is a fascinating case-study. On various tracts of the land around the lake, one can find people residing in high-rise apartments. A section of society that is not socio-economically fortunate, lives on some other parts…

Even as the State Election Commission has announced the calendar of events for BBMP polls, the Karnataka State government has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on Monday, against the High Court single bench judgment on BBMP election.The State government in its petition has challenged the HC single bench judgment that directed the State to hold election before August 5th as per the Supreme Court’s previous order. Initiating a fresh round of litigation, the government has appealed the Supreme Court to put the election process on hold. It has sought time to conduct polls as per delimitation and reservation…

As kids, we used to chant a popular ditty: Ganesha banda kaayi-kadubu tindaChik-kereyl bidda dodd-kereyl edda (Ganesha came, ate coconut modakaFell in the small lake, emerged from the big lake) Don’t ask.  But I’ll come to the point. And I do have one, believe it or not. In the 1960s, when we first moved to Jayanagara 6th block, there were two kereys (tanks). The small tank was to the west of Kanakapura Road and the large tank to the east. Unlike now, the tank bund part of Kanakapura Road was very narrow. If two lorries—usually rickety old Fords—had to pass…

BBMP Administrator T M Vijay Bhaskar Pic: Akshatha M It has been only two months since senior IAS officer T M Vijay Bhaskar assumed charge as the Administrator of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). With the announcement of calendar of events for BBMP election and the council likely to be formed in a month, there is very less time left for the Administrator to prove his mettle. In an interview with Citizen Matters, Administrator T M Vijay Bhaskar shares his experience and the initiatives taken up during his tenure, challenges faced by BBMP and solutions to the impending problems. What…