Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has dismissed the fears that the splitting of the Bengaluru civic body will result in losing the local Kannadigas hold and result in Telugu and Tamil Mayors. "Our intention behind splitting the BBMP is good. But some people said Bengaluru was built by Kempe Gowda, and if the city's civic body was split, local Kannadigas will lose their hold on the new municipal entities which will be taken over by Tamil and Telugu mayors. That is not going to happen," the CM said.
"Small is beautiful," Siddaramaiah added to defend the Karnataka government's decision to create three smaller municipal bodies in Bengaluru and stated that the proposed bodies will make city governance "transparent and effective."
“Problems such as drinking water shortage, lack of proper roads and garbage problem faced by Bengaluru are all due to the wrong decision by the JD (S) - BJP coalition regime in 2007 to enlarge the city civic body by including the eight municipal bodies and 30 villages that have caused all the problems the citizens were facing today”, he said.
The BJP and the JD (S) are misleading and trying to play up people against the government, because BBMP elections are ahead", Siddaramaiah added.
Bengaluru is a city with 10.1 million population and BBMP has become too unwieldy to administer, the Congress and the BJP had talked about restructuring the civic body in their respective election manifesto. Siddaramaiah said, he had decided to split the civic body after the council's term is over as he did not want to do it in midway and deprive the elected council of its remainder term.
The political fight over splitting the BBMP has reached the zenith of blame game. This will only result in he hardship for the people of Bengaluru. The allegations and counter allegations against each other has ignited an election campaign like situation. The people of Bengaluru is not at all ready to take part in the blame game. They are only interested to know whether they can live peacefully in a clean and healthy surroundings.
By Premji
