The Karnataka cabinet held a meeting on Friday and announced to reorganize the civic structure of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Council, increasing the number of wards from 147 to 198. It has also been decided to conduct elections for new cooperators by the end of July through Electronic Voting Machines.

The new council, apart from 198 members, would be constituted by nominating members including city MLAs, MLCs and MPs, leading to increase total member strength to
268. The nominated members have also been given voting rights.

The rural development and panchayat Minister of state, Shobha Karandlaje said that it was necessary to increase number of wards due to ever growing infrastructure needs of the city and to deliver better governance.

The political observers termed the move as strategy of the incumbent government to take control of civic body. A political observer said, "Now each assembly segment will have about 8 wards under it. The BJP believes it has a strong base in the city and can hope to get more wards under its belt."

However, a government official linked the decision with the development of peripheral areas and said, "The idea is to have more number of wards in the outer areas. They are mostly the village pockets need a lot of attention."