GBA constituted with 75 members, Maheshwar Rao named GBA Commissioner

The State government on Tuesday constituted the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) chaired by the Chief Minister and co-chaired by the Bengaluru Development Minister. The GBA will come into effect immediately, the order said.

While the city’s civic limits will be divided into five corporations on September 2, the GBA will be the pan city body tasked with coordination between multiple corporations and parastatals.

The government also issued an order on Tuesday naming M. Maheshwar Rao, at present the Chief Commissioner of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), as Chief Commissioner, GBA.

The GBA has three officials — Chief Commissioner, who is the member secretary of the GBA, a chief town planner and chief engineer. However, the GBA, which is also tasked with balancing revenue imbalance between multiple corporations, doesn’t have a post in-charge of finance.

The GBA has all 28 MLAs, four Lok Sabha MPs, 11 MLCs and six Rajya Sabha members with their votes in Bengaluru, including Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, as members. It also has mayors and commissioners of the five corporations in the city, expected to come into effect from September 2, as members.

For the first time ever, the heads of all parastatals of the city, including planning authorities, power, water, transport utilities including BMTC, BMRCL, DULT and BMLTA, city police and fire and emergency services, have been brought on one platform. Lack of coordination between various parastatals has been one of the big hurdles for the city’s coordinated development.

Many exclusions

The government order constituting GBA has also excluded some others. For instance, the Rail Infrastructure Development Company (Karnataka), spearheading the suburban rail and Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Ltd. (B-SMILE), the special purpose vehicle recently formed to spearhead mega infrastructure projects in the city, are not represented on the GBA. While Bengaluru City Police Commissioner is a member, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bengaluru is not.

The draft of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024, submitted by the Brand Bengaluru Committee, also had Ministers for Home, Energy and Transport departments as members of the GBA. However, the Bill made into law by the State government dropped them as members of GBA, which many civic activists argue will be a hindrance in the days to come.

The crux of multiple Public Interest Litigation (PILs) petitions challenging Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 is the GBA, which petitioners and opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contend is “unconstitutional” as the Constitution doesn’t provide for a layer of governance between a corporation and the State government and that it undermines the autonomy of corporations. In response to this argument, in the recently concluded Karnataka Legislative Session, the State government introduced an amendment to the law clarifying that GBA has no powers to intervene in the affairs of the corporations.