Bengaluru Navanirmana Party report 'exposes inefficiency' in Rs 120-cr spend by BBMP

Bengaluru: Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP), has unveiled a comprehensive first-of-its-kind ground report on "complete inefficiency, lack of process and fundamental lacunae" in the Rs 120-crore ward spend announced by the BBMP Chief Commissioner for all 198 wards at Rs. 60 lakhs per ward.

The report revealed several issues including complete lack of knowledge in more than half of the 198 wards about the Rs. 60 lakhs budget allocated by the BBMP for refurbishment work in each ward.

Speaking at a press briefing, Srikanth Narasimhan, Founder and General Secretary, BNP said, "BBMP has announced many projects with a lot of fanfare in the past but almost all of them ended up failing miserably on the ground. Even this project has been pre-emptively hailed by BBMP, calling it a landmark move towards citizen participation in local governance.

However, given the past experience, BNP has launched a campaign called "LekkaBeku" with the objective of truly involving citizens and driving transparency in the budget which has been announced."

Elaborating the process adopted by BNP, Lalithamba B V, head of Campaigns, BNP, said, "BNP has instituted a Corporator Team in each of the 198 wards across the city. From these teams, we identified a volunteer to reach out to the Nodal Officers listed on the BBMP website in their respective wards, to find out about the status of Ward Committee meetings as well as to understand if these Nodal Officers were willing to take citizen inputs on spending the announced budget.

In a few cases, the volunteers were already in touch with the officials before, and were attending Ward Committee meetings to get civic issues resolved, so they had a fair picture of the situation on the ground."

Outlining the key findings of the report, Rishi Raghavan, Core Working Group Member and Head of BNP Youth Wing, said, "The most important finding of this campaign is the disorganised manner in which the BBMP functions at the ward level. Many Nodal Officers are unreachable and there is a lack of clarity on who the Nodal Officer is in quite a few cases which is a clear indication of a fundamental gap in the process of appointment itself. Only 112 of 198

Nodal Officers confirmed as Nodal Officers, which is just a little over 50%. Ward Committee meetings are not happening in many wards and there is no system in place to even track if meetings are happening. Only 23% of the wards were confirmed to host a Ward Committee meeting.

There is a lack of awareness even among Nodal Officers about the Rs. 60 lakh announcement which indicates a complete breakdown of communication within BBMP where the Chief Commissioner seems to have announced to the public without even first communicating internally.

He added, "There is also a lack of engagement by Nodal Officers with citizens in quite a few cases, which shows that there has been no thought-out process on how the officials can engage with citizens to solicit inputs and finalize the budget. We have prepared a detailed report on the same which explains the issues in detail and also provides suggestions / recommendations to make the process effective."

Summarizing the recommendations and suggestions from BNP, Subbu Hegde, Governing Council Member of BNP, said, "The BNP report reveals fundamental issues like lack of a pro- cess for even appointment of Nodal Officers, absence of a communication system within BBMP, announcements being done without any thought on implementation / execution and a complete lack of accountability.

BNP has recommended simple and practical, yet effective measures like formalizing the process of appointment of Nodal Officers, creation of a commu- nication group between Chief Commissioner and the Nodal Officers, forcing accountability through mandating uploading of meeting minutes on a central site by Nodal Officers and creating a simple process for engagement with citizens to finalize the budget."

Sidhartha Shetty, Zonal Leader of BNP, said, "BNP has shown through this campaign that even with limited resources at its disposal, it can create an effective process of identifying people in all 198 wards, engaging them and getting them to follow a common process to achieve impactful results.

It is amazing how even a simple task like appointment of 198 Nodal Officers, which is the easiest step in the process, is itself failing. We would like to offer our support to BBMP to help put in place a better system, technology and process for more impactful results and ensure accountability and transparency on the ₹120 crores budget announced.

The decentralized system of BNP works very well across 198 wards. If BNP can do this with extreme- ly limited resources at its disposal, why can't BBMP do it with its access to unlimited resources and manpower.

Unlike other political parties which only criticize the Government, BNP is of- fering positive, constructive and concrete suggestions for improving the system with the only intention of bringing about positive change."

In conclusion, Sowmya Raghavan, Core Working Group Member of BNP, said, "The current system and process of BBMP is in complete shambles, which will ensure that any project or budget announced by it, will invariably fail on the ground.

BBMP is failing miserably due to lack of intent, lack of process and lack of will to execute from the powers-that-be. Bengaluru Nava Nirmana Party (BNP), with its exclusive focus on Bengaluru and a professional approach towards governance, is showing how to make even a seemingly-complicated system work effectively It is time now for BBMP and the Government to engage with parties like BNP too, which can help deliver true impact on the ground."