BBMP

With the onset of summer, many of the parks in the city have dried up. Most parks maintained by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) were using up water from the bore wells on their premises. But over the last few months, many borewells have been drying up. Wipro Park in Koramangala has been drying up. Pic: Navya P K Parvathi Srirama, Joint Secretary of Koramangala 4th block RWA, says that compared to December, there is much water shortage now in parks. Parvathi, also a ward committee member of Koramangala, is in charge of monitoring parks in the area. Swabhiman…

In the run up to elections in Karnataka, a nationally telecast TV news programme last weekend focussed on the massive deterioration of civic life in Bengaluru. On display was the breakdown of garbage management, water supply, rise of the contractor and tanker mafia and the link to politicians, the state's political parties becoming personality-led factions and in all, a capital city and the silicon valley of India hopelessly caught in a disastrous spiral. Citizen Matters was interviewed for the telecast as well. It ended though with a hopeful note that when voters have a chance to reverse things. (Headlines Today,…

It is that time of year when we have to pay the property tax for the current year. There are two different types - White (Form IV) in bilingual, and Blue (Form V) For the properties, where there is no change in any field - either in category (residential / non-residential), dimensions (any addition / deletion to the structure) or usage (tenanted / self-occupied) one has to use the white form (Form.IV). Unlike previous years, the Form IV has already reached all the help centres this time. Pic: Shreyas B K The block period for this term came to an…

Last September, after a long delay, the BBMP had invited new tenders for garbage collection and transportation in 91 packages. The 198 wards of the city are covered by these 91 packages. But the new tenders have come to effect in not even half of these; only 43 packages have new contractors now. In the remaining 48 packages, work is still being done by old contractors by extending their previous contracts.But a bunch of new tenders - 12 of them - were approved by the state government on March 20, 2013. The government's approval came on the day when the…

With the expected implementation of new Ward Committee Bye-laws/Rules drafted by the BBMP, the citizens can now question the ward committees on litter or garbage in their ward. The best part is, they can even move court if the complaints to the ward committee or the corporator do not solve the problem. Councillors had debated on whether BBMP should form Bengaluru-level ‘Bye-laws’ or state-level ‘Rules’, for ward committees. File Pic. The draft of the Byelaws/Rules for Ward Committees has been sent to the state government for approval. The final push for the formation of ward committees had come as a…

Earlier this month, I sent the following letter to the The Chief Justice of Karnataka regarding storm water drains, an issue that I have tried to take up with the concerned government authorities without much success. Remarks that the High Court (HC) of Karnataka made on storm water drains prompted me to write this.The Chief JusticeHigh Court of KarnatakaBangalore 560001 March 13, 2013KIND ATTN: The Honourable Judges of Karnataka High CourtSubject: STORM WATER DRAINS (SWD's) IN BANGALORE CITYI understand from the newspapers that the Honourable Court is seized with a matter concerning storm water drains in the city and has…

"Not only did I have to point out the corruption, I had to do the complete investigation and support it with proof. It took me two full years to gather all the documents required to expose the corrupt BBMP engineers," says S R Venkataram, 82, a veteran RTI activist.Venkataram realised the power of RTI early on, "I started using the powerful RTI tool soon after it was enacted in 2005 which enables any citizen to fight corruption and ensure good governance in Government offices." Venkatram S R, RTI Activist with his neatly documented set of RTIs. Following up on public…

Click here for the website of an NGO called Sarvodaya. They help Bangalore citizens with issues regarding stray dogs, and implement the ABC (Animal Birth Control) process instead of killing the dogs.The mobile no. is 91 98801 19900The landline is 080- 65340127Email: info@strays.in There is no political will in Bangalore to permanently solve the issue of stray dogs; though every now and then, there are instances of feral dogs attacking, and sometimes killing, children, BBMP has not taken a single step to curb this menace. Hence, citizens have to look towards NGO's like this for help.    ⊕

"It is close to four years now and there has not been a single repair work of the road," says Anil Kumar, but the RTI activist is not complaining! "It is strong, inspite of the many floods since 2008 when it was laid" says Kumar. A conversation with Kumar makes it apparent that it is not just the roads themselves but the monitoring of the entire process that residents need to be aware of in order to ensure that a good road is laid. In 1995, Ejipura was a new ward that lacked many basic civic amenities. A group of…

Bengaluru has already lost thousands of acres of land to encroachers. But if you know about a case of encroachment, there are many government bodies where you can complain. Here is a list of whom you can contact, and how. 1) BMTF (Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force): The state government had formed BMTF in 1996 to check land grabs and building violations in Bangalore Metropolitan Area (BMA). BMA includes Bangalore urban and rural districts, and part of Kolar district. All encroachments of government land/water bodies in these areas - even those that come under BBMP, BDA, BWSSB etc - will be…