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Nalapad Ahmed Haris, the two-term MLA from Shantinagar has most of Bengaluru’s Central Business District fall under him. He started his political career as a member of Youth Congress. He is a first generation MLA, whose father N A Mohammed also had tried his luck in politics. He contested elections from Indian National Congress (INC) in Kasaragod constituency in Kerala during 2004 parliamentary elections, but lost to CPM candidate P Karunakaran. However, Nalapad Senior had laid the foundation for the successful Nalapad Group of Companies which also brought the family close politicians and political parties. He originally hailed from Kerala…

A doctor by qualification, C N Ashwath Narayan has been a long-time Malleshwaram resident. He contested the assembly polls from Malleshwaram thrice, and has won twice, his entry as a winner being in 2008. He, directly or indirectly, was a part of many businesses and charitable trusts, including Padmashree Medicare Private Limited, TKN Global Education Services, Padmashree Charitable Trust, Padmashree Diagnostics and Malleshwaram Sports Foundation, but not anymore. He has been in the news in recent times for the multiple manifesto outreach programs he has been organising. His administrative initiatives have been largely in the medical sector with Health and…

Every year, an MLA is given Rs 2 crores every year, to spend on developmental works in his constituency. There are around 180 expense items sanctioned under Aravind Limabavali’s MLA Local Area Development Funds, out of 10 crores in five years. ☛ Click here to see what an MLA is allowed to spend Local Area Funds on. It appears from the data that Limbavali spent more than half of the funds in building bus shelters.  107 bus shelters costing a total of Rs 5.02 crores have been spent.  There are also curious facts in the way the money was spent. For example, when…

Each year, an MLA is given Rs 2 crore to spend on developmental works in his constituency. He/she can allocate the funds for government, community and health infrastructure, to create permanent solutions to the problems. This article gives an idea on how and what can the funds be spent on. ☛ Click here for full data set of works done/ sanctioned under N.A Haris’ MLA Local Area Development Funds. An MLA is given Rs 10 crore for spending on his constituency in five years. N.A. Haris’ accounts show an expenditure of Rs 9.34 crores in five years. He appears to have…

March 23, 2015; the venue: Chennai Corporation Council. While passing the budget of his last term in office, 'Saidai' Duraisamy, then Mayor of Chennai remarked, “Of the 419 announcements made by the AIADMK-led Corporation so far,  218 have been implemented. We will implement the remaining 165 this year.” This was at the Corporation Council meet on the budget. He also compared the percentage of announcements that were implemented in the earlier regime vs his current regime and was proud that he had  done better by a margin of 15%. In that budget debate, 103 of the 200 councillors participated. The opposition…

Aravind Limbavali is the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Mahadevapura constituency. Summary 2nd time MLA in Mahadevapura, reserved constituency for SC/ST General Secy of BJP Karnataka Engineer by training, started as RSS/ABVP member Minister of Higher Education and later Health and Family Welfare in 2008-13 BJP government. Active in the 2013-18 assembly with many questions on lakes, roads and other urban development topics Bulk of his LAD funds have been spent on Bus Shelters - more than 5 crores. Constituency continues to struggle with issues of water, polluted lakes and traffic nightmares   Profile of MLA Arvind Limbavali is…

The growth in the nation’s cities has been maddeningly slow. And it has not even been much, according to the fifth edition of Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017. There has been some improvement in the quality of governance in 23 cities. Yet, this has come about at a frustrating snail’s pace. Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha), a Bengaluru-based non-profit, has surveyed the quality of governance in 23 major cities in 20 states. The survey was based on 89 questions. Pune was the Number 1 grosser, scoring between 3.0 and 5.1 on 10 and topping the…

In the year 2017, data collected by Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) reveals that government authorities, at both the central and state levels, demolished over 53,700 homes, thereby forcefully evicting, at a minimum, 260,000 (2.6 lakh) people across urban and rural India. The total number of persons affected has been calculated by multiplying the number of homes demolished by the average household size according to the Census (4.8). However, many demolished houses had more than one family, and most of the affected families have more than five persons. The real number of people displaced is therefore likely to…

Bengaluru's air quality crisis, unlike that in the cities of the north, is a silent one; most online ambient stations which provide information to the public paint a fairly clean picture of the city’s air, though most of its citizens feel otherwise. In an effort to understand the palpable pollution levels in the air we breathe, in comparison to the ambient data being generated by the KSPCB, Co Media Lab and Climate Trends carried out a 7-day air quality monitoring exercise with the help of a low-cost monitor used to measure personalised exposure levels. The activity was spread over a…

A newly proposed amendment by the State Government to the Karnataka Tree Protection Act (1976) asks to denotify about 50 species/ subspecies of trees that currently need permission to be cut down. Simply put, if you need to chop these trees down, you no longer need the permission of the Forest Department. Media reports state that most of the species identified in this list are those which line Bangalore pathways and will deal a disastrous blow to the city’s already fragile ecosystem. The amendment however states that it is being proposed to “...exempt certain species of trees, which are grown…