Governance

In our article on monetary compensation available to victims of road accidents, we had mentioned the Solatium Fund, constituted under the Solatium Scheme, under Section 163 (1) of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988, for the payment of compensation to victims of hit and run motor accidents. This came into force with effect from July 1989. Below is a round-up of its most salient features, and the details of the procedure for claiming compensation under it. How is the Fund administered? Contributions to the Fund are made by the General Insurance Corporation according to an agreed formula and the latter nominates one…

Hoskote. East Bengaluru. March 22, 2016. The case of 22-year-old Kishore Kumar, whose bike was hit by an unidentified vehicle and who was turned away by two private hospitals in the city, was reported by several local media. The first hospital reportedly refused treatment to the victim, as he was unaccompanied by family members or any persons known to him and had been taken to the hospital by a good samaritan. Cut to a year later. On March 17, 2017, The Indian Express reported the case of Sunil Patra who was critically injured when a truck rammed into his motorcycle…

Many may have missed this small snippet of news, but the Special Officer, Corporation Commissioner D Karthikeyan has already passed the Greater Chennai Corporation budget, reportedly on March 14. Details of the budget are however being withheld in the name of election code of conduct, in view of the imminent by-elections in RK Nagar. While one can understand that the announcement of welfare measures related to RK Nagar could violate the election code of conduct, it is difficult to see why the entire budget details have to be withheld. And one cannot hold back the feeling that an elected council…

Bengaluru is almost entirely dependent on the state of Karnataka for its electricity supply; nothing wrong in with that in appearance. However, inability of the state to respond consistently to the city’s power demands coupled with the failure to diversify its power generation sources impose a large hurdle on the city’s competitiveness and quality of life. BESCOM, the institution responsible for power distribution in eight districts of Karnataka including Bengaluru Urban and Rural, accounts for almost half of the state’s total demand out of which 2,400 MW are reserved for Bengaluru. With a total electricity demand of about 7,000 MW…

As we have seen in an earlier article, the Government of India, as it works to implement the Smart City Initiative of the MOUD, has realised the need for a paradigm shift in education and recruitment of urban municipal staff in the country. Perhaps in alignment with this perceived need, the NDA government is reportedly set to take architecture education out of the purview of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and allocate it to the Urban Development Ministry, as reported by The Indian Express recently. It is further reported that this was despite the HRD Ministry’s opposition to…

Real estate makes for booming business in Chennai as well as the rest of India despite recent setbacks. Many people want to own a house or buy one for tax-saving reasons. Chennai being a metropolis currently witnesses fewer individual houses being constructed and more transactions of apartments or similar buildings. This means that it is not only enough to verify the land registration and encumbrance certificates, but also a host of other required certificates from the town planning authority, CMDA, and others. How do builders fare in this? Not very well if court cases are an indication. The Madras High…

Bruhat Bengaluru Nagara Palike (BBMP) has its branches in every ward. They are called ward offices, and they will have the assistant engineers, junior health inspectors, work inspectors, garbage supervisors and all other important stuff related to your ward. So, you need to know where your ward office is, to get anything done from BBMP. To help everyone in Bengaluru who is searching for their ward office, Opencity.in is mapping the ward offices of all 198 offices of Bengaluru, through this form. Since the form involves collecting the location data, you might be prompted to share your location. You can…

Smart cities need a vision. But perhaps more importantly, they need people who are able to draft that and take it to fruition. On February 28 2017, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) of the Government of India asked states to create a professional municipal workforce and carry out merit-based recruitment of suitably qualified people. It also urged lateral entry of experts and professionals for specific posts and for a specified contract period in their bid to ensure "professionalization of municipal cadre" in the states. A similar thrust was evident even in the formulation of the implementation policy of the…

BBMP contract workers protested in front on BBMP on Womens' Day. Even as the BBMP had organised exhibitions and other programs for Women’s day, more than a thousand women contract Powrakarmikas of Bengaluru gathered at the BBMP head office to ask the BBMP, why these working women were being denied their rights. Workers from Indiranagar, RT Nagar, Koramanagala, Hegganahalli, Kengeri, Ramamurthy nagar, Gandhinagar, Banaswadi, Yelahanka and several other areas, braved threats from contractors and participated in the protest. The Contractor of Horamavu and Rammurthynagar has even threatened to fire the workers for being part of the protest. Students, several activists…

Send it back to where it came from... after it has been thoroughly segregated and composted, of course. We’re talking about sending the biomass part of the waste a city generates back to the soil. This would ensure the recycling of nutrients, creating closed economies as is the need of the hour, and virtually trigger off a positive domino effect. It remains a fact that we are a country with a rich history of recycling, the returning of nutrients in the way that the Karnataka State Agriculture Department is proposing plays to that history. The department has proposed that the…