4,219 ward committee meetings held in one year despite COVID: Survey
The Hindu
Eleven wards did not meet, while 33 wards held 2 meetings per month
In the one year, between August 1, 2020, and September 4, 2021 — which included the months where Bengaluru weathered the onslaught of a second wave of the pandemic — 4,219 ward committee meetings were held across the city. Of the total 198 wards, 170 held meetings during this period.
These were some of the findings of a Ward Committee Meeting Survey conducted by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, the details of which were released at a workshop on Saturday.
“Over 4,000 meetings in one year is a record of sorts given Bengaluru’s two-decade-long struggle to institute ward committees,” Srinivas Alavilli, head, Civic Participation, Janaagraha, told The Hindu.
A crowd comprising farmers, researchers, professors, students, and horticulture enthusiasts thronged the ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Hesaraghatta, Bengaluru, on Friday for the inaugural ceremony of the Triphal Diversity Show which showcased 300 mango, 100 jackfruit, and 100 banana genotypes in collaboration with ICAR-National Research Centre for Banana, Tiruchirappalli.
The State government on Friday constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Additional Director-General of Police, Manish Kharbikar of the Economic Offences division of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to probe the alleged multi-crore scam in the government-run Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation.