City: Bengaluru

MLA Satish Reddy (Bommanahalli Constituency) presided over a meeting of all office bearers of Residents Welfare Associations (RWA) and the Federation of HSR Layout on June 4, Monday, to discuss infrastructural and other issues. Concerned Engineers responded to questions from the RWAs, closely monitored by the MLA. Perhaps for the first time, we were happy to see the elected representatives, all the concerned engineers and staff of BBMP, BDA and officials from Police Department, present under one roof in such a review meeting alongside representatives of RWAs. The meeting lasted over two hours and was conducted with utmost seriousness. The…

It was a seemingly pleasant evening at Bannerghatta road, near Dairy circle. I got off my office cab and took an auto to my son's daycare to pick him. I wanted to give him a surprise by picking him up that day, rather than wait for his dad to pick him up. We shopped for a few minutes on Spar and as we got back, we had a very unpleasant surprise waiting for us. Even as we walked towards his daycare, we watched a mini truck overturn and spill all its contents on to the road. This is a very…

A group of people protested in front of the Prestige Monte Carlo (PMC) apartment on June 11th along Doddaballapur road, Yelahanka. The protestors demanded relinquishing PMC land for widening of Ananthapura village road. This internal road starts from Doddballapur road and goes perpendicular to it, all the way up to Ramagondanahalli village, about 3 kms away. A half kilometre stretch of the road has been widened already. The protestors started arriving at 7.30 am. The police had arrived at 7 am; G Ramesh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North East), and the local area police inspector were present. At 8 am, all…

This year, I haven't seen the pre-monsoon rains that almost start by March. The monsoon is delayed and so far there has not been any good rains except maybe a couple of times. No matter how much we conserve, the water crisis is of grim proportions. We don't have Cauvery water yet, not that it is of great solace because we all know how irregular that supply is even in areas that have them. And, now BWSSB have literally left the people high and dry by suspending supply for 3 straight days in the coming week. In a thirsty and…

Names missing from the voters' list, confusion over booths allocated - it was deja vu for voters at the Graduate Constituency MLC election on Sunday. Although only 28% i.e. 30,800 off the 1,10,000 people registered showed up, voting was not smooth for many of them. In the previous MLC election, 20,000 voted out of the 70,000 graduates registered. MLA N A Haris with a voter trying to sort out the latter’s grievance. Pic: Sankar C G In many places, people faced difficulty in finding out their respective booths, as the website which carries the details of the voters list and…

Unlike previous years, BBMP held a meeting with NGOs this time to get their suggestions for the 2012-13 budget. The meeting, held on May 26th, had over 15 representatives from NGOs such as CIVIC, KRIA Katte (Karnataka RTI Act Forum), Hasiru Usiru, Citizens Action Forum (CAF) etc. About 25 people representing various NGOs attended the meeting. Pic: Navya P K The Chairman and three members of BBMP's Taxation and Finance Committee - which prepares the budget - attended. Chairman of the committee, Munendra Kumar (Jakkur Corporator, ward no.5), said that the budget draft has not been prepared and that public…

How can I find my name in electoral roll?Here is the final voter roll published in the website of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka: http://164.100.80.163/Teachers_Grd/a1.htmlWhere are the voting booths?The names of all voters and their respective voting booths are available at http://ashwinmahesh.in/mlcvote.htm. (Lok Satta compiled this list with data from CEO office.) In another tool http://mlc2012.herokuapp.com/, on entering your name, you can get the address and map to your booth. What is preferential voting?In the preferential voting system, voters should rank candidates in their order of preference. You have to put ‘1' against the name of the candidate you prefer…

R K Misra is a member of the ABIDe task force for Bengaluru and urban reforms campaigner. He's a card holding member of the BJP. And yet, here he is supporting a Loksatta candidate, Ashwin Mahesh, in the coming Sunday's Graduate constituency election. This support is part of his online campaign Bangalore28 that he has started on Facebook. Bangalore28 is a campaign to field ‘good candidates' for Bangalore's 28 MLC and MLA seats for the 2013 elections. He feels this will in turn impact the 2014 national elections. Citizen Matters asked RK (as he's popularly known) some hard questions on…

On the last episode of Satyamev Jayate, the topic raised was healthcare in India. I felt that in this episode many facets related to healthcare in India were aptly handled. One of the issues raised was of the exorbitant cost of medicines and the need to make generic medicines available within the reach of all. I admire Dr. Samit Sharma who has helped in setting up many of these generic medicine shops with the help of Rajasthan government in Rajasthan. I do hope that this initiative can be taken to other states as well. Many of us are aware of…

There was a citizen’s piece recently on Citizen Matters that talked about what BBMP should look at in the upcoming council budget. I would like to suggest adding bins. In fact, how about a vigorous, mass, ‘Bengaluru-centred ‘bin beku’ movement , along the lines of TeamHazare’s mobilisation  last year ? Lane outside BDA complex Koramangala. Filepic: Anisha Nair We need garbage bins. Urgently. I don’t know whose idea it was, to do away with roadside garbage bins, in the name of  “door-to-door collection” but  the city has now become one huge, continuous pile of rubbish, from one end of each…