The GBA, chaired by the Chief Minister and co-chaired by the Bengaluru Development Minister, will have a footprint of around 1,400 sqkm, mostly congruous with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Area.
| Photo Credit: K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
The Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024, a draft of which was submitted by the Brand Bengaluru Committee to the State government on Monday, proposes to create a new body called the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) at the city level as the apex layer of a three-tier governance structure. Multiple municipal corporations and ward committees will form the second and third tier in this model.
The main functions of the GBA will be planning, integration, coordination, and finances at the city level. It will bring in equity among multiple municipal corporations through State and Union government grants.
“Given there will be multiple corporations, the GBA has a very crucial role to integrate at the city level,” said a source in the know.
The GBA, chaired by the Chief Minister and co-chaired by the Bengaluru Development Minister, will have a footprint of around 1,400 sqkm, mostly congruous with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Area.
The GBA will take over the planning function of the BDA and work under the aegis of the Bengaluru Metropolitan Planning Committee (BMPC), which is now proposed to have a footprint of the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region which includes Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural, and Ramanagara districts.
Parastatals on one platform
The GBA will, for the first time, bring all parastatals on one platform, which is key to the city’s governance. Unlike many other cities, most civic functions like transport, electricity, water, and sewage, apart from planning, are under the State government-run parastatals in the city and several ad-hoc arrangements of forming a co-ordination committee have failed to streamline governance in the city.
“All projects and departments, cutting across the boundaries of multiple corporations like major roads and storm-water drains, will be under the purview of the GBA. Even large projects will have to be ratified by the GBA. While the GBA will not tender out works, it allots these projects to various city-level parastatals like the BDA and the BWSSB. The BDA will likely become the implementing agency of infrastructure projects in the city,” a senior official said.
The heads of the nine parastatals, including the BDA, the BWSSB, the BMLTA, the BSWML, the city police, and others, will be members of the GBA with voting rights. The GBA will also have Ministers for Energy, Transport, Home, and Urban Development as members, but with no voting rights.
The modular draft Bill provides for one to 10 municipal corporations to be formed in the city. All the mayors and a representative from each zone of these corporations, the zilla panchayat president and representatives of the panchayat outside the municipal area of the GBA, will be members of the GBA and have voting rights.
A total of 32 elected representatives [28 MLAs and four MPs] from Bengaluru will also be members of the GBA, but will not have voting rights. The GBA will also have domain experts like urban planners, transport planners, public policy experts, economists, and environmentalists as members.
Executive committee
The draft Bill provides for an executive committee chaired by the Bengaluru Development Minister with chiefs of all parastatals, and a Metropolitan Commissioner of the rank of Additional Chief Secretary, for the day-to-day functioning of the GBA. While the GBA is stipulated to meet every two months, the committee will meet every month.