Karnataka govt. to set up one delimitation commission for all five corporations

The State government is set to constitute a single ward delimitation commission for all five municipal corporations, which is likely to be led by the Chief Civic Commissioner. 

The exercise will not be carried out separately for each of the five corporations, even as the Cabinet cleared an amendment to the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, to prepare a separate voters’ list for the corporations.

Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar recently said that the final notification of the five corporations will be issued on September 2 and delimitation will begin on September 3. The final ward list will be notified by November 30.

Similar ward size or same number of wards?

As per the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, each corporation can have up to 150 wards. However, the population of these corporations vary, from 1.3 million in the East to 4.5 million in the West. “We can say we will carve out the same number of wards in each corporation, somewhat closer to 150, which will give us wards in each corporation of different sizes. The other approach is to fix the average size of a ward in terms of population across the city, which will give us a different number of wards of similar size in each corporation,” explained a senior civic official. 

Civic activist Ashwin Mahesh argued that each area should be allowed to have its own trajectory and the delimitation exercise should be done separately for each corporation, fixing an ideal ward size for that corporation. 

However, N.S. Mukunda, of Bengaluru Praja Vedike, argued that the corporations were already uneven in terms of their revenue and making uneven wards in terms of population would perpetuate more inequity. “If the ward delimitation is done separately for each corporation, in the East corporation, the size of the ward would roughly be around 8,000, while it would be over 40,000 in the West, which is unfair. Equal representation is key in the city.”

A senior Urban Development Department official told The Hindu that the way wards will be carved out is the prerogative of the commission. However, given that the government will set up only one commission, this indicated that the commission will fix an average range for ward size and carve out wards to ensure the sizes are roughly around this, the official added. 

Another official involved in the exercise said that the number of wards in these corporations may be in the range of 70 to 150, and the size of the ward may also vary between 15,000 and 30,000. 

Delimitation based on 2011 census 

Meanwhile, as per statutory rules, ward delimitation can be done only on the latest census data, which in the present case will be the 2011 data, according to which Bengaluru’s population is 85 lakh, while the projected population today is 1.44 crore .

The spatial distribution of this population growth is also skewed more towards South-East Bengaluru, which was relatively lower in 2011. “The wards delimited based on the 2011 census would mean wards that would be dead on arrival. They would be completely divorced from the ground reality. But there is no way out of this as this is a legal requirement and we haven’t had our decadal survey in 2021,” an activist said.