"Discussions on Bengaluru's future"

There was a meeting of Benagaluru RWA folks (Resident Welfare Associations) in Koramangala today. Koramangala SmartVotes team made a presentation. Here's my aankhon dekhi report.

1. Meet was organized by City Plus, Suvarna TV and Radio Indigo. I understand Rajeev Chandrasekhar, our representative in the Council of States (aka Rajya Sabha) took an interest in organizing the event.

2. The event was rather badly named. Lets take a part of the title, "Discussions on Bengaluru's future", which suits us fine.

3. Prithvi introduced Koramangala SmartVotes to the audience and spoke about citizen's participation.

4. SmartVote video on the upcoming (?!) BBMP elections was screened.

5. Ashwin Magesh made a presentation on the Bengaluru Plan, a blueprint for the city.

6. YV Pai, President of KUCC - Koramangala United Citizens Council called for a federation of RWA's across the city. He referred to the 74th Amendment of the constitution, which inserted Article 243S concerning the establishment of Ward committees. (Shobha Narayan, please note.)

7. Jayanagar MLA, Vijaykumar spoke about the work of RWA's in his constituency.

8. SmartVote Campaigner Radhakrishnan made a presentation on the issue of vanishing Open Spaces. He explained how BDA is actively shrinking the Open Spaces from about 9.8% in 1995 to 6.7% in 2001 to the absymal 3.4% estimated in 2015. BDA ofcourse is selling Open Spaces to rich and the mighty or is giving away to ex-MLAs!

9. Rajeev Chandrasekhar and some RWA presidents spoke, to which I failed to pay attention :-) Hope to get an abridged version from @rajeev_mp's tweets! I wish the MP gives a leg up to our twitter account @smartvote too.

10. SmartVote team had put up a stall and campaigned at the venue.