Citizens will help BBMP draft ward panel bye-laws

Resident welfare associations (RWAs), civic activists and NGOs across the city will help the BBMP draft the bye-laws for the functioning of ward committees.

The draft bye laws will be placed before the council in the next council meeting, KR Niranjan, special Commissioner, BBMP, told a workshop on ward committees organised by various civic groups in the city on Wednesday.

The decision to collaborate with the residents to draft the bye-laws comes at a time when the Karnataka High Court has set the BBMP January 21 as the deadline for setting up ward committees in all the 198 wards. The BBMP held a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the issue and urged the state government to provide them with the rules that will explain the functioning, roles and work of the ward committees (especially financial).

Wednesday’s workshop, organised by CIVIC, ESG, Alternative Law Forum among others, saw residents raising concerns with regard to who would be the members of the ward committees, as well as how the members can be held accountable. Over 200 members of various RWAs and civic groups attended the workshop.

The participants asked the special commissioner to enure that the physically challenged were also represented in the ward committees, a fixed criteria for selection of people for the committees, the expertise they needed to possess. They also wanted more representation from RWAs on the committees.

Vijayan Menon of Koramangala Initiative pointed out that while the discussion revolved around who will form ward committees, there also had to be rules on how the members of the ward committee would be held accountable and how to ensure transparency in meetings.

The fact that area sabha members would not be represented in ward committee meetings was brought up by a participant who questioned the efficiency of ward committees without area sabha representatives.

“Considering that the whole point of ward committees and area sabhas is to bridge the gap between the people and the elected corporates, without area sabha members, will this be possible,” asked one participant.

BBMP already has list ready, but no RWAs nominated Leo Saldanha of ESG clarified that the BBMP corporators had already made a list of people who would be nominated as ward committee members ready.

“What the BBMP has not been able to do since 2011, they have managed to do within days of the High Court directive,” said Saldanha.

He said that while this essentially means that the corporators have put in their ‘assistants’ in ward committees, people should continue to send names of people to the Commissioner as well as the Special Commissioner, even if it was only to place on record that these names were rejected.

He added that it was sad that although over 200 people who attended the workshop were actively participating in civic affairs for many years, none of them was nominated to ward committees.

During the discussions, it was suggested that RWAs and civic groups stay out of the ward committees and act as watchdogs and scrutinise members of ward committees as well as their activities.

“Our main agenda over the next two years is to set right the system by scrutinising every member’s actions. The members of the ward committee are public servants and considering that they occupy statutory status, they can be sued for not doing their job right,” said Saldhana, reiterating a suggestion by Ajesh Kumar, a lawyer.

Rajeev Chandrashekar on ward committees:
Member of the Rajya Sabha Rajeev Chandrashekar on Wednesday stated that he supported the demand from various citizen groups, RWAs for transparency in nominations to ward committees.

“The demands of the citizens to constitute ward committees is a long standing one and the BBMP must ensure transparent criteria in appointments of members of the committee and ensure that the ward committees have true neighbourhood representation, including RWAs from different parts of the ward,” he said. 

“I understand there are some suggestions to dilute the citizen involvement by adopting non transparent and ad-hoc methods to nominate members. I would urge the BBMP leadership to refrain from this - this will be unforgivable and against the spirit of High Court Order that was a consequence of a PIL, which will predictability lead to further anger and dissatisfaction among the citizens, who are already highly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in our city,” he said.