Tortuous saga of citizen participation

Urban (mis)governance

It is 30 years since the enactment of the Nagarapalika Act, mandating 'Power to the People' in urban areas through Ward Committees. Karnataka’s history in enabling this has been nothing less than a tortuous saga, given the lack of political will to share power with citizens.

To improve citizen participation, the Centre made the implementation of its Model Community Participation Law, with its concept of Area Sabhas (on the lines of the Grama Sabhas), a conditionality on all states. It also called for election of an Area Sabha Representative (ASR) by the voters themselves, who would sit on the Ward Committee as a member.

Despite the above recommendation for election of the ASRs, the subsequent KMC (Amdt.) Act of 2011, called for the ASRs to be nominated on the recommendation of the councillors and other Ward Committee members to be “nominated by the Corporation”. There were however no guidelines on the criteria for the nominations.

Thus, the Ward Committee members nominated in BBMP were either spouses or relatives of the councillors or their political party-workers leading to nepotism and favouritism in their selection. With this, the essential purpose of making the councillor accountable to the community got lost. The new BBMP Act of 2020 too continues this practice of nominations but in different ways.

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In a circular dated 1.2.2002, the then BMP Commissioner, Ashok Dalwai, had emphasised that “consideration should be given to non-political persons” to minimise the political interference in the formation of Ward Committees.

Further, the KMC (Amdt.) Act of 2011 did not give any role to the ASR on the ward committee, as recommended in the Model Law. Now, the new BBMP Act allows the ASRs to sit on the Ward Committee but without voting rights. Also, the BBMP Act makes the whole citizen participation exercise meaningless by making Ward Committee decisions recommendatory in nature!

Another glaring violation has been that Ward Committees were unheard of in all municipal corporations other than Bengaluru for 29 years after the Nagarapalika Act. But a PIL filed by the Mangaluru Civic Group (MCG) & Others, resulted in the then CJ Abhay S Oka issuing an order on 08.08.2019 that Ward Committees and Area Sabhas should be set up immediately after the elections to the Mangaluru Municipal Corporation and that ‘Areas’ should be notified by the Urban Development Department (UDD) immediately to enable constitution of Area Sabhas. This order of the HC applied to all other municipal corporations in the state. But since Mysuru failed to form the Ward Committees despite this order, citizens of Mysuru approached the HC again with one more PIL and CJ Oka gave six weeks’ time to the Mysuru commissioner to form the Ward Committees and Area Sabhas.

Aware of the nepotism in the selection of Ward Committee members in Bengaluru, citizens’ groups in these other cities have been asking their municipal commissioners to follow a transparent and democratic process for forming Ward Committees by calling for applications from citizens though public advertisements and constituting a committee for selecting them in a non-partisan manner.

Faced with this public pressure and counter-pressure from councillors against this, the Mysuru commissioner wrote to the UDD seeking urgent guidelines for selecting Ward Committee members as he would otherwise face contempt if he did not complete the task within the six weeks’ time fixed by the HC. But shockingly, the UDD failed to come to his rescue and he had to undergo the mortification of requesting the HC to show lenience to him as the UDD had failed to provide him with the guidelines!

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It is appreciable that municipal commissioners of several cities, for instance Mangaluru, Davangere, Kalaburagi, etc., have heeded the citizens’ demands and issued public advertisements calling for citizens’ applications for selecting Ward Committee members. The commissioner for Mangaluru also asked applicants to file affidavits that they do not belong to any political party and do not have any criminal cases against them. Thus, the first Ward Committees in a city other than Bengaluru were initiated in Mangaluru in November 2021.

The UDD was recalcitrant even with regard to notifying ‘Areas’ for constituting Area Sabhas as per the HC order. In the case of Mysuru, it even argued that a requisition has to first come to the UDD from the municipal corporation for it to notify the ‘Areas’. This was soundly countered by CJ Oka pointing to the law in this regard, which put the onus on the UDD to suo motu notify the Areas. In the case of Mangaluru, the UDD has notified that each ward will be split into two ‘Areas’ only, which will mean that each Area Sabha will have about 3,000 voters or more, making it unviable for effective citizen participation.

Meanwhile, a ray of hope is the amendment to the Karnataka Municipalities (KM) Act of 19.10.2020 which mandates Ward Committees and Area Sabhas even in smaller cities. This Act abjures the nomination process and citizens themselves are broadly in charge of selecting their ASRs who shall be members of the Ward Committee. And there is no bar on their voting rights. This makes the process democratic and in conformity with the recommendations made in the Model Law. The KM Act also mandates that the ASRs should not be members of any political party. It has defined every Polling Booth Area (PBA), with a maximum of 1,200 voters, as the 'Area' for constituting Area Sabhas, which makes it viable for effective citizen participation.

But given the great variance of this law with the KMC and BBMP Acts, a PIL was filed in October 2021 before the HC by civil society organisations questioning this “Inequality before law” created between citizens of small and big cities in violation of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. The HC has accepted the petition and issued notice to the government. The government has accepted the petitioners’ basic contention and has agreed to set up an expert committee to bring “Equality before Law” between the three Acts. In the interim, they have agreed to issue guidelines to the commissioners. One hopes the tortuous saga will end with this.

(The writer is Executive Trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore)