The history of
urban local self-governing bodies (commonly called Municipalities) in Karnataka
State dates back to more than a century. These local bodies are again classified
into various categories like Corporations, Cities, Town Municipalities and Town
Panchayats depending upon the population. The Municipal bodies are now governed
by the provisions contained in Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964 (for City Municipalities,
Town Municipalities and Town Panchayats) and Corporation Act, 1976 (for Corporations).
Municipalities have been constituted with the objective of discharging certain obligatory
functions(As stated in Obligatory functions link)
The Government
of Karnataka has reconstituted the municipalities according to the 74th Constitutional
Amendment Act. The towns have now been classified based on the population and other
criteria as Town Panchayat (Population 10,000 – 20,000), Town Municipal Councils
(Population 20,000 – 50,000) City Municipal Councils (Population 50,000 -3,00,000)
and City Corporations (Population 3.0 lakhs and above). On this basis, at present
there are 8 City Corporations, 44 City Municipal Councils, 79 Town Municipal Councils
and 93 Town Panchayats in the state. Also for specified areas like industrial areas
where municipal services are required to be provided, the government has created
4 Notified Area Committees (NAC).
In order to discharge the above responsibilities,
Municipalities have been vested with the powers to levy certain taxes and fees.
Also, the State Government transfers a portion of its general revenues to the urban
local bodies. The main sources of income of the municipalities are derived from
(a) taxes on building and lands, (b) user charge for water supply (c) license fee
for regulating the building construction activities and fee from other trade license.
The municipalities can also raise loans from Central and State Governments and Financial
Institutions to meet expenditure under capital heads of accounts.
Government through
Directorate of Municipal Administration supervises the functioning of the municipalities.
Government directly supervises the functioning of the Corporations. The Directorate
has the responsibility to supervise the function of the municipalities, work out
suitable human resource policies, exercise disciplinary control over the staff of
municipalities, monitor the tax collection of ULBs, lay down policies for transparency
in expenditures, hear appeals against the decisions of municipalities, release the
Government transfers to the ULBs, as well as implement schemes like SJSRY (for urban
poverty alleviation), IDSMT, Nirmala Nagar. The Directorate also collects statistics
from ULBs and helps in the preparation of municipal statistics. The Directorate
also inspects municipalities, interacts with both elected representatives and the
employees to find out both genuine and specific problems of urban administration
and urban municipal services and work out the solutions for those problems.
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