Governance

It has been five and a half months since the third time corporator from Congress, B N Manjunath Reddy took charge as the Mayor of Bengaluru. With BBMP budget round the corner and news of property tax hike after seven years making the rounds, the Mayor speaks about some of the issues in BBMP and clears his stand on certain things, in an exclusive interview with Citizen Matters amid his busy schedule. Just six months are left for your term to end. So what is that one thing that you would like to be remembered for as a Mayor of…

B.PAC submitted its strong objections to BESCOM’s proposal for increase of electricity tariff for FY-17. TV Mohandas Pai, Vice President and Revathy Ashok, CEO and Managing Trustee, B.PAC made the submissions to the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) during the public hearing conducted by KERC on Friday February 26th 2016. Following are the highlights of B.PAC’s submissions.  Capital Expenditure CAPEX for FY15 has nearly doubled – The sanctioned budget was Rs 763 crore, whereas actual CAPEX has increased to Rs 1474 crore in 2014-15. This amounts to an increase of Rs 711 crore. Such a significant increase in unplanned CAPEX…

February 23, 2016 marked the 6th anniversary of the Carlton Towers fire accident which claimed the lives of nine people and saw over 60 being injured. A function to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Carlton fire accident was held on Saturday, 27 February 2016, at St. Joseph’s College of Commerce Auditorium. Justice Santosh Hegde was the speaker of this year’s Beyond Carlton Memorial Lecture. Since its inception a few years ago, Swati Ramanathan - Co-founder Janagraha, R A Venkitachalam - MD Underwriters Laboratories, Rajeev Chandrasekhar - MP, and V Ravichandar - Civic Evangelist, have spoken on topics relating to…

Janaagraha’s Participatory Budgeting campaign in Bengaluru, called MyCityMyBudget, was launched on November 23, 2015. Over more than two months of hectic online and on-ground activity, the campaign reached out to various sections of the city’s citizenry to facilitate their identification of inputs to the forthcoming BBMP Budget. Citizens were asked to give inputs pertaining to their respective wards and neighborhoods. The campaign is now poised to move to the next phase of submitting the inputs received to the elected representatives and the relevant agencies. Sapna Karim, Co-ordinator, Civic Participation, Janaagraha, says: "Our team has complied the inputs and shared a…

T N Seetaram is a well-known name in Kannada literary circles, and popular for his TV soap operas that had progressive outlook and strong women characters. He recollects a time in Bangalore’s history, when there was no traffic and chaos, and there was no BDA too. BDA was formed on January 6, 1976 - exactly 40 years ago. In the seventies, I was living in my friend's house, as a tenant, in Swimming Pool Extension near Malleshwaram. The owner of the house, the father of my friend Krishnamurthy, never used to collect rent from me, more because of his affection…

Mahesh (name changed), a resident of Malleshwaram in Bengaluru, has been watching many cables hanging on a tree near his house, some of them looking as if they are cut. Fed up of seeing them everyday without being able to understand why they exist, Mahesh decided to check the cut cable. To his surprise, the cable was cut at the other end too, and came off easily when he pulled it. People do not want to touch the hanging cables, because they think it could be electric cable and hence dangerous. As nobody checks them, unused cables laid by cable…

Open Streets (OMG) is being held today, February 21st, on M.G. Road, Bengaluru. Celebrating Bengaluru OMG aims to revive the long-lost charm of the 'Boulevard of Bengaluru City'. Traffic will be restricted between Anil Kumble Circle and the Brigade Road junction on MG Road between 9 am and 9 pm, opening the streets for festivities that celebrate the city of Bengaluru in all its traffic-free glory. BMTC and BMRCL have extended their bus and metro services respectively, to encourage people to use public transport when commuting to the event. Special arrangements for free and secure parking for bicycles have also…

Pic: Ganga Madappa Only one pet dog per flat, every dog to have a collar, badge and microchip, clean up after your pet. Rottweilers, Pit Bulls and other aggressive breeds to be muzzled in public places. These and some more new rules are part of BBMP's draft by-laws for pet dog licensing that Urban Development Department is expected to approve soon. All these years, there were no rules governing pet dogs in Bengaluru, while other cities like New Delhi, Chennai or Chandigarh have had rules that require pet dogs to be registered for many years now. However, Section 344 of Karnataka…

"Better than nothing" is not progress. It's just better than nothing. If we set our metrics so low, we can never develop. Take the example of buses. The city needs about 13,000 to 15,000 buses to reach the kind of service levels that are seen in places with excellent bus service globally (1,250 buses per million of population). Also, each year, as the population grows, the fleet strength has to grow by about 200-300. That's the need. The actual fleet strength now is 6,500. And each year, 600 buses are scrapped, so these need to be replaced to keep the…

By-election for Hebbal Legislative Assembly Constituency is just a week’s away. The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka has announced the date for by-election to Hebbal and two other constituencies. The election for the three constituencies, Hebbal, Bidar and Devadurga, is scheduled for February 13th. The by-election in Hebbal is to fill up the vacant post that was created following the death of MLA Jagadish Kumar last November. As many as 20 candidates are in the fray in the Hebbal constituency. During the last election, the BJP candidate had won the seat. As this by-election is seen as a matter of…