BBMP to release maps of newly formed wards on August 21

DHNS

Three days after the state government notified the newly carved wards, the BBMP plans to make public the boundary maps of these wards on Monday. 

These maps are likely to provide clarity to citizens in understanding their new ward and how accessible it is. The delay in publishing these maps may bring down the number of citizens’ feedback as there are only 12 days left to share comments. 

When 243 wards, now withdrawn, were notified last year, the BBMP had not only shared the boundaries of these wards by identifying landmarks, but also released maps on a newly created website that was downloadable to citizens. Such clarity of data was not immediately shared this time when the government notified the new wards. 

Assembly constituencies such as Bommanahalli, Dasarahalli, RR Nagar, and KR Puram have a maximum of 12 wards each. Mahadevapura, large, both in population and area, does not figure in the top list as it gets 11 wards and shares the second spot with the Bengaluru South assembly segment. This could primarily be because the delimitation committee relied on the Census 2011 as it is the last official population census. 

Besides reducing the number of wards created during the BJP’s rule, the newly formed delimitation committee has also done away with names that do not connect with the area or the layout. Some of the ward names dropped in the new list are Veeramadakari, Chanakya, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Ranadheera Kanteerava, Veera Sindhura Lakshmana, and Vijayanagar Krishnadevaraya. 

"The Mahadevapura assembly constituency, in both population and area, requires around 40 wards. If voter enrollment is taken into consideration, the real population figures are much higher than 2011. But without the census, we are moving forward with 12-year-old data," civic group Whitefield Rising tweeted after the government published the new list of BBMP wards.