BBMP readies to present budget, public consultation be damned

Bengaluru: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is gearing up for the 2019-20 budget, by again giving a miss to public consultation.

The Karnataka Municipalities and Accounting Rules, 2006, which guides budget presentation in municipal bodies, mandates two rounds of public consultation when preparing the budget, to facilitate expression of the views of the community. According to the rules, the first round of public consultation is to be held in November and the next in December.

The rules mandate that public consultations be held by inviting representatives from registered resident welfare associations and NGOs, trades and industry associations and such other associations and prominent citizens that the municipal council may like to invite. The meeting is to be chaired by the mayor, deputy mayor the corporation commissioner.


“Suggestions received in public consultation shall be recorded and placed before the municipal council for discussion along with the note of the municipal commissioner,” the rules say. Although the rules are in force for several years, public consultation is no priority in the BBMP. The closest it comes to involving the public in defining the budget is by acknowledging Janaagraha’s My City My Budget programme. My City My Budget is a participatory budget campaign that aims at collecting budget inputs from citizens, which is then submitted to the BBMP.

According to Sapna Karim, (coordinator) citizen participation, Janaagraha, the campaign done in partnership with the BBMP had collected 70,000 budget inputs from citizens of which about 12,400 inputs were included in last year’s budget. The existing system may not be the best or efficient way, but it is better than not having a platform, a voice and space, she said.


Citizen groups are unaware of the rule mandating public consultation. “Since budget is a political and administrative decision, public consultation is mostly ignored and people are not aware of the provision,” said Vijayan Menon from Citizens’ Action Forum.

“We are taking people’s opinion through ‘I Change My City’ campaign. And then there are ward committees, which can come up with their priorities for the ward. When RWAs are part of ward committees, there is no need to hold a separate consultation,” said BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad.