India is not a post-constitutional democracy

All political parties have to be registered and state that they will conform to constitutional principles. Once this is done by them, any violation of this which is brought to the election commission's notice through complaints can be used to question the registration itself. They could be disqualified or even de-registered in case of severe violations.

To a large extent un-elected and un-electable or failed political workers get nominations as chairpersons or presidents in boards, corporations and similar authorities. sometimes like in the case of Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) elections are held, but most likely rigged as well. Similar nomination without public scrutiny happens in case of batf and abide and an extra constitutional role for corporates in city planning is created. Corporate or business plans for growth do not have any space in this form at all!

Social justice and equity plans or other plans for a city like Bengaluru or region need to go through a metropolitan planning committee (mpc) which if formed properly is likely to have representatives from various parties and technically qualified people. To prevent a single party from dominating decisions in the mpc elected reps from all different parties and urban and rural jurisdictions shd be represented.

And if they are unaware they shd legalistically read up Part-IX (73rd CAA) and Part IX-A (74th CAA) of the Indian Constitution both of which have just completed 20 years recently.

Better days are ahead if more people know how to prepare plans with a constitutional morality, and more people inside and outside government have the capacity and the capability to conform to it and make other committees like batf or abide conform to it.

Equality before law as well as one person one vote are constitutional principles. Similarly equity in terms of resource allocation or use is just as important. In urban or rural areas any other form of influence will amount to buying favours / lobbying or even reverse clientelism (from corporates to politicians).

We need more people to commit themselves as upholders of constitutional norms. As the local government delivers facilities closest to the people all attempts to divert resources away from human development and reallocate funds to more profitable "infrastructure growth" comes into conflict with both the role of local government and constitutional norms.

We must bring back the focus on the all round development of people's and local government capacities and capability to deliver the amenities and facilities.

 
Separating the roles of government such as in the case of MP's vs MLA's vs corporator's / councillor's / panchayat members, and respect for all tiers of government (esp., local govt) are part of this framework of principles. So while the state govt provides the funds, functions and functionaries, the local government provides the facilities and amenities.

extra constitutional forms like govt committees for infrastructure or other corporate lobbies should not deliberately encroach on the constitutional form instead they must allow democratic decision making. Any number of committees as per law could be started but they have to confirm such principles and conform to them. These are the built in checks and balances and those who support the constitution will agree that an important role for citizens also exists for protecting the same, nurturing and helping move ahead.

SAS helped evasion of BBMP property taxes by commercial developers, some IT sector?

While the self assessment scheme (SAS) for property tax assessment was an original idea of the BMP there was support from BATF in terms of branding and marketing it. Yet the batf hyped up the SAS based on the transparency criteria and so while the common tax payer paid up their dues, the big wigs including WIPRO, Phoenix mall etc evaded the same; see below., wipro allegedly did not pay for a few years (total amount being Rs 19.28 crores)

The question is did the batf's support help in this evasion of property taxes? Did big properties remain un assessed ? So then without checks and balances by officer visiting the premises for simple assessment of properties huge amounts of taxes worth crores were evaded?

on top of all this evasion BBMP was not allowed to raise property taxes as per law.

This is a dangerous trend since it deprives the allocation or expenditure of funds for the basic needs for which the local property taxes are most important.

e.g. see news report below

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Civic body "applies thought" to force Wipro to fork dues

CHITRA V. RAMANI

PTI A Bangalore Bruhat Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) squad conducting a "Drum Beating" session in front of the Wipro headquarters in Bengaluru on Friday.

Drumbeaters hired by the BBMP gathered outside Wipro’s head office

The IT city’s civic authority, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), applied thought and came up with a winner here on Friday. On a day when Wipro Ltd. announced its third quarter results, BBMP officials were busy drumming up pressure to get the Bangalore-based bellwether to cough up Rs. 19.28 crore in property dues.

Even as the country’s third largest software company trumpeted a net profit of Rs. 1,716 crore, a team of the feared drumbeaters hired by the BBMP gathered outside Wipro’s head office at Doddakannelli village, Sarjapur.

INSTANTANEOUS EFFECT

The effect was magical. Embarrassed company officials hastily handed over a cheque for Rs. 5 crore to Ramanand Rai, Deputy Commissioner, Mahadevapura Zone, with a promise to clear the remaining dues in a week, a gleeful official told The Hindu, adding that Wipro had not paid its property tax for five years. The official said the BBMP had sent several reminder notices, the latest on January 11.

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BBMP panel collects Rs. 5 cr. property tax dues from malls

At Tesco, the committee found that the establishment owed the BBMP nearly Rs. 10 crore. On insistence, Tesco immediately cleared 40 per cent of the dues by paying Rs. 4 crore.

Phoenix Mall owes the BBMP Rs. 3.5 crore.

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reference

1. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/civic-body-applies-thought-to-force-wipro-to-fork-dues/article4320422.ece
2. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bbmp-panel-collects-rs-5-cr-property-tax-dues-from-malls/article4412112.ece

Directly elected Mayor for BBMP would conflict with the Constitution and public demands?

The argument against the very concept of a directly elected Mayor for a 5-year term comes from the need to have a representative, democratic, decentralisation based electoral process, with caste reservation and the principles enshrined in the Indian constitution, as well as the need for representation of the historically deprived urban poor.

Abundant safeguards need to be identified and implemented to ensure compliance with these principles in conformity with Part IX-A (74th CAA). The expression of the need for a directly elected mayor conflicts with them.

This could well be the classic conflict which a face off between concepts of globalisation and modernity throw up. In the Indian context the principles of equality and social justice implemented through the form of reservation for backward and historically deprived castes and communities (SC/ST, Women) is itself the expression of modernity. This is because it shows how the nation can move forward and how such a step ahead is consistent with the long standing demands for maintaining social justice and equality.

This is crucial when it comes to elections to municipal and local governments, use of resources and decision making regarding the planning and allocation of resources for fulfillment of basic public needs.

On the other hand the demands of the globalised terrain of for profit corporates and MNC's is to place a city such as Bengaluru in the governance frameworks of New York or London. Their not for profit foundations also join the chorus. In Bengaluru this reactionary force has crystallised into the Bangalore Political action committee (b.pac) a trust, which positions itself as the promoter of a middle class 'vote bank', the young educated globalised urban youth.

b.pac the "infrastructure advocates"

But there is a consensus among members of the b.pac trust to support the creation of infrastructure for the economic growth of city of Bengaluru rather than the human development of its citizens. This would mainly include highly expensive and profitable signal- free corridors, underpasses, toll based expressways, metro rail and stilt flyovers. Many of these would be access controlled due to high tolls or by restricting certain vehicles (like cycles, buses, horse drawn carriages and other non-motorised Transport) but not restricted for cars, SUV's, MUV's and XUV's.


Clearly this approach is distinct from supporting the implementation of projects for basic needs such as water supply, roads, drains and street lights, which are paid for by the property taxes of citizens. In fact by prioritising infrastructure growth as opposed to basic needs the property taxes are being diverted away from essential core functions of local governments such as water supply, streets, roads and roadside drains.

5-year term conflicts with constitutional principles

It is not possible to have adequate rotation, reservation, or representation if the term is five years for one directly elected Mayor. But would this conflict with constitutional principles? Yes - since this may result in the election of a Mayor from the SC/ ST community only after a period of 20-25 years depending on the rotation in reservation. It would be a gross setback to such principles and public demands.


Similarly an argument for the election of a mayor with a Bengaluru vision based on profits for 'stakeholders', commercialisation and corporatisation are also inconsistent with the principles listed above.

This is exactly why the current corporate obsession with 'infrastructure led growth' and growth rate of cities and city economies cannot be the drivers of a city vision consistent with democratic constitutional norms.

In fact the corporate vision for planning and infrastructure growth at local government level calls for a sacrifice of local democracy. These are more consistent with the vision of a city -state or a union territory which end up negating the need for a BBMP municipal council.

The democratisation required to strengthen the functioning of a local municipal council must also be debated and would be the subject of a future blog.....

74th CAA, untouchability, Bengaluru, BJP and the new BBMP Woman Mayor (ST ?)

The landmark urban decentralisation legislation- also known as the Nagarpalika act (74th CAA) along with its counterpart Panchayati Raj act (73rd CAA) is nearing the completion of 20 years in May 2013. This constitutional status for 'local government' a subject in the state list was an important achievement in the processof decentralisation. This act was discussed, debated and negotiated- through 3 different lok sabhas (1984-89, 89-91, and 91-96), with views expressed by national and regional parties and the tenure of 4 PM's (Rajiv Gandhi, V.P Singh, Chandrashekar and Narasimha Rao). Together these amendments were certainly the largest addition to the constitution in terms of impact and content on democratisation and decentralisation.

Karnataka High court order Mayoral elections go ahead

The Karnataka High Court, Bengaluru has recently ordered in April 2013 that the BBMP Mayor election can go ahead. The Chief Election officer of the CEC has also given the green signal for the same despite the fact that the code of conduct for MLA elections is in force. The condition imposed by the court order is that the GoK shd consider the post to be reserved for Scheduled Tribe candidates.

(Mayoral poll can be held if posts are reserved for STs)

The GoK in Jan 2013 had misused the delay in availability of the updated Census 2011 data. They did it by postponing preparation of the reservation roster of wards for election in the Urban local elections. Despite this with the Supreme courts intervention the elections to local governments were held, on March 7th 2013 by the state election commission. To prevent this all political parties had passed a joint resolution in the state assembly censuring the SEC. Thereafter the assembly even passed a law amending the KMC Act to force the SEC to take the concurrence of the GoK before announcing elections.

These efforts to prevent elections failed because the Governor of Karnataka did not provide his consent to the amended act. And when the elections were held the BJP was rejected by the voters, despite being known as an urban based party.

BBMP Mayor election - confusion and discrimination

Recently the BJP led GoK had changed the Mayor election reservation roster to General category to provide a chance for a Brahmin mayor (Lobbying for Mayoral post hots up). This was taken to court by groups saying the opportunity had to be given for the ST category since this was not done since last 16 years after the first election for Mayor held in 1996 (post the passage of 74th CAA).

Once again the GoK is forced to have elections to the post of Mayor, Dy Mayor and Chairpersons of standing committees of BBMP, by reserving the category back for Women - General (Govt changes category, city to have a woman mayor) .

Since it seems like the position of the BJP is against following constitutional mandates and principles, their ferocious attempt at imposing a Brahmin mayor on Bengaluru has backfired, instead the Mayor will now be category General - Women.

The BJP led GoK has an approach of symbolism and tokenism with the lack of any genuine commitment. So even the passage of a state act for 50% reservation of seats for women candidates in local government elections also backfired since this otherwise major political move could not be implemented.

They lack the basic approach of inclusiveness and would like to deploy all kinds of exclusionary and exclusivist tactics, which inevitably backfire, because people would take them to court or rout them at the elections.

In the case of the April 27th or 30th 2013 (going by news reports) Mayoral election for the BBMP, the ruling BJP has now once again demonstrated why they shd definitely not be re-elected in next months MLA elections.