Governance

Lobbying with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to fix your road should not be fundamentally a different experience from shopping for a car. After all, you paid your taxes; you are simply asking for the tax money to come back to your locality. You pay for your car, you take it. You pay your taxes, you get your road. But it ain’t so in Bengaluru. Once you pay your taxes, power transfers to the government. That’s fine, if we have a benevolent dictatorship, but what we have is an incompetent corruptocracy (if there’s such a word). Thus speaking to…

The Karnataka government introduced provision for self declaration in many services by various departments recently. The scheme is expected to be implemented in most departments by mid-July. However, here is the hitch: the mechanism to check the truthfulness of the statement made in the declaration is not foolproof yet. This calls for more transparency from the government, in order to prevent corruption. The first department to fall in line is the Revenue Department. An official from the Department of Administrative Reforms says, “Revenue department has already introduced this initiative with citizens getting most of the certificates (caste, income, profession etc),…

Who has forgotten the incident that took place recently, in which a man burgled in to a paying guest facility and raped a 25-year-old techie? Naturally everyone is worried about the safety of their own PG facilities. When something goes wrong, police are the ones to protect people. But here’s the shocker for you: Bengaluru police doesn’t have a list of paying guest facilities in the city. And the city administration body, BBMP too doesn’t have a list of authorised PGs readily available online. In one of the reports, police officers said that it was not for the first time…

When a resident of Whitefield in Bengaluru, Anjali Saini, asked the road diggers on the streets of Whitefield to show the permission by the BBMP, she never knew what it will lead to. What she was shown was a permission given to Vodafone by BBMP, which had many pages filled with various clauses. She found many violations to the terms mentioned in the letter. There was neither any barrricade, nor any warning lights or signage in the spot where the work was progressing. There was no indication of when the work would begin or close. The excess excavated mud which…

  High Court of Karnataka (HC) asked Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike to be careful while choosing the lowest bidders while awarding tenders for biomining at Mandur, as many of them have failed in the past. On June 18 2014, HC Green Bench Division comprising of Justice N Kumar and B V Nagarathna passed a series of orders in the SWM PIL filed in 2012 after the villagers of Mavallipura  and Mandur stopped dumping of garbage. HC accepted the suggestions of  the Expert Committee on Solid Waste Management made on June 13, 2014, to adopt the method of biomining to clear…

  How efficient are the organisations working in the government sector, in Bangalore specifically? How easy is it for an individual to get something done - perhaps get a driving license or apply for an electricity connection? If we have to go by what some of our readers have had to say, it looks as if it is not at all easy. Why, sometimes even information is hard to come by. Time and again, we hear from our readers who share their woes about the city. Someone is fleeced on a BMTC bus, another has to make multiple trips to…

Police using force against the protesters. Pic courtesy: Sweta Daga Karnataka Slum Clearance Board (KSCB) invited a flood of protest on June 4th 2014, when it sent the police force to evict the slumdwellers of Jai Bhuvaneshwari Nagar in Bangalore, inspite of a High Court order that stayed the eviction in the past. Two JCBs and 150 police officials were seen hovering around the Bhuvaneshwari Nagar slum near Rajiv Gandhi Chest Disease Hospital, NIMHANS, at around 8 am on June 4th. At 9 am, they started evicting people. Electricity connection was cut by the police officials. Slum dwellers, members of  Jai…

Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) has instructed Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) not to let sewage into the lakes, drains, rivers and wells of Bengaluru, in the backdrop of numerous complaints from the public. The letter to BWSSB had been issued on March 30, 2014. However, a press note from KSPCB says that as nothing was done so far, KSPCB is releasing the matter to the notice of the media. The press release issued by the KSPCB says that KSPCB Chairman Vaman Acharya has instructed the BWSSB not to let municipal waste to the water sources. Houses,…

Central Minister of Housing, Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation Minister (HUPA) Venkaiah Naidu announced in a press conference on Friday that one among many plans to develop the city would be to make use of scientific Geographic Information System (GIS) for Town Planning. Venkaiah Naidu announced this after conducting first review meeting in the state at Hotel Orchid on Friday, May 30, 2014. The progress review meeting had top bureaucrats of various departments such as BBMP, BWSSB, BDA, BMTC, KUIDFC etc. Urban Land Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy was also present. Venkaiah Naidu and Bangalore Central’s Member of Parliament P C…

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will form a committee to investigate the A khatas issued by its officials for revenue sites across Bengaluru. BBMP took this step in the wake of complaints by many corporators on A khatas being issued by BBMP officials for revenue sites or revenue pockets, for a hefty bribe, allegedly between Rs 50,000 to 5 lakh, depending on the size of the plot. On May 28, 2014, BBMP Council Meeting saw high decibel discussions, when BJP Corporator from Kacharakanahalli ward, Padmanabha Reddy, took up the issue. He showed the documents and khata certificates issued recently to…