Governance

Police atrocities can be questioned once the Police Complaint Authority is completely functional. File pic. The Police Complaint Authority (PCA) that existed only on papers for the past three years has now finally been formed. However, it doesn’t have punitive powers - it can only recommend action after an inquiry. The State Police Complaint Authority has started functioning in Karnataka from September 2, 2013.Retired high court judge Justice M P Chinnappa has been appointed as the chairman of the state Police Complaint Authority. The members are retired additional chief secretary Abhay Prakash, IGP- Grievances Alok Kumar and IGP- KSRP Malini…

Over 68 lakh people out of total 96 lakh have already enrolled for Aadhaar card in Bengaluru. Most are waiting for the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme to roll out, and for the LPG subsidy to come to the bank accounts mapped. While everyone was under the impression that Aadhaar card is mandatory for all government subsidies and services, a Supreme Court interim order issued on September 23, 2013, ruled that Aadhaar card cannot be made mandatory, it has to be voluntary. Retired justice Puttaswamy, the man behind the PIL filed in Supreme Court against UIDAI. Pic: Bosky Khanna Justice Puttaswamy,…

Did you know that there are committees in BBMP to decide the budgeting and requirements related to various issues of Bengaluru’s governance? These committees came into existence after the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Amendment Bill - 2010 was approved. A gazette notification by Karnataka government dated July 30, 2010 mandated that the BBMP should have 12 standing committees to cover various aspects of city governance. Each has a clearly defined role and responsibility. Standing Committee for Taxation and Finance: This deals with all matters relating to finance and taxation and all other matters not specifically assigned to any other standing committee.…

  October 13, 2012. A student of National Law School of India University (NLSIU) was abducted and raped by an eight-member gang inside the Jnanabharathi campus of Bangalore University, adjacent to NLSIU, when she was with a male friend. She bade goodbye to Bengaluru after the incident and returned to her hometown. She is not the only one - there are hundreds of cases of violence on women that go unreported for various reasons. Such mindless violence can be countered with intelligent precaution and sufficient safety measures. What if the victim had some sort of alarming or alerting system handy,…

The Supreme Court recently barred criminals from contesting elections, and also ruled that convicted MLAs and MPs would lose their seats. Our politicians immediately tried to overturn this through an Ordinance, approved by the entire cabinet. The other parties, which are supposed to provide opposition to such dubious steps, also kept quiet because such moves benefit them too. But there is no doubt that this retrograde step will infinitely harm democracy in India.  Speaking to the media at Bangalore Press Club, JD(U) State President M P Nadagouda said:  “On September 14 we held a conference on Electoral Reforms. After the…

Namma Bengaluru Foundation has submitted its objections and suggestions to the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Draft Rules (Ward Committee). This was done after an extensive study undertaken by the foundation. Despite the right of representations in the development of the local neighbourhood as guaranteed by the Community Participation Bill, true spirit of community participation has not been followed by the corporators.  The existing selection of the ward committee members is not democratic and involves selective nominations from the corporators. The concept of Ward Committee (WC) is a novel addition in examples of people-centric governance. The ward committee is intended to create…

When I was driving home one night recently with my family in Bangalore, I met with a minor accident. It was raining heavily, street lights were off, roads deserted and I could not see the road ahead. Before I knew what was happening, my car came to an abrupt halt with a couple of thundering noises. Did I hit somebody, I wondered with a thudding heart. I got down and realised that the car had climbed up a road divider. Luckily, everyone was safe. Later, when the Maruti Service Centre people came and got the car down, I was told…

I bought a resale apartment from an individual who had not taken possession of the flat from the builder (The Confident Group) and had a loan going. The builder was my point of contact for this purchase and I had absolutely no interaction with the seller. In fact, the senior executive from The Confident Group, refused to share the seller’s contact details. The builder helped me in getting the housing loan through Axis bank and ensured that all the documents related to the apartment were handed over to the bank executive for verification. The builder demanded that I pay Rs.30,000…

One of the banes of electoral rolls in the country is the rampant duplicate entries. Voter records are duplicated (a) within the same voter list, (b) in some other voter list within the constituency, (c) in other constituencies of the state or (d) in other states. For the past four years CEO-Karnataka has been telling that they have great software using fuzzy logic, capable of identifying all kinds of duplicates. CEO also told in February 2013 that his organisation deleted about 65,000 duplicate records identified by software and considered that there are no more duplicate entries. However, in the electoral…

Many incidents in the city in the past have proven that the fire emergencies in Bangalore do not get timely help. As the city saturates, the worry of fire and emergencies also mounts, because of the increasing skyscrapers and congested areas. The lacunae in the fire services are usually attributed to shortage of stations. And why is the shortage? Because, the Fire Department doesn’t have enough land inside the city. Explaining the shortfall, Om Prakash, Director General of Karnataka Fire and Emergency Services Department, says that finding land to build a fire station is the biggest challenge. Funds and government…