Bengaluru is preparing to replace a planning framework that has governed the city for nearly two decades, but the new Bengaluru master plan is beginning with a structural complication: responsibility for planning the metropolitan area is divided between the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) and the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA). The Karnataka Cabinet has approved a ₹15.22 crore consultancy for the GBA to prepare a GIS-based revised master plan within a year, even as the BDA separately works on its own Revised Master Plan 2041.
The immediate announcement is significant because Bengaluru has continued to expand while the city’s principal planning document remains the Revised Master Plan 2015, prepared by the BDA in 2007. The long gap between the existing plan and the city’s physical growth has been associated with the absence of connecting roads in several areas and the loss of open spaces, including parks and civic amenity sites, according to the report by Prajavani.
The new exercise is therefore not simply a technical update. It is also an attempt to establish how land use, infrastructure and urban expansion will be coordinated after the creation of the GBA. The authority will prepare a plan for about 709 square kilometres. The BDA, meanwhile, will retain planning responsibility for approximately 427 square kilometres within its jurisdiction. Together, these areas cover 1,136 square kilometres, although the report notes that Bengaluru has grown beyond both boundaries.
That division creates the central institutional question around the new Bengaluru master plan. A master plan is intended to connect land-use decisions with the infrastructure required to support them. Roads, public facilities, open spaces and development permissions do not function as isolated administrative subjects. If adjoining areas are planned by different institutions, decisions taken on one side of a boundary can affect mobility, drainage, public services and development pressure on the other.
The GBA has selected a consortium of two private companies, IBI Group India Private Limited and Arcadis Professional Inc, to prepare the revised plan. Three organisations participated in the tender process. The state Cabinet approved the proposal last week, and GBA Chief Commissioner Maheshwar Rao said the authority had constituted a committee to supervise preparation of the plan. The stated completion period is one year.
The use of GIS is important to the exercise because it allows a plan to organise land, infrastructure and spatial information through a common geographic framework. However, the source material does not specify the datasets, public consultation process, land-use categories or implementation mechanism that the consultants will use. Those details will determine whether the exercise becomes a functioning planning instrument or remains primarily a map-based revision of existing proposals.
The BDA’s parallel process adds another layer to the institutional arrangement. For areas outside the GBA’s jurisdiction, the BDA is working towards a Revised Master Plan 2041. It has invited bids to appoint a consultant, and four bidders have participated. The selection of the lowest bidder has not yet been completed, according to the report.
This means Bengaluru is not moving towards one new plan at one time. It is moving towards at least two planning exercises, carried out by two authorities, with different spatial responsibilities and overlapping consequences for the wider urban region. Experts quoted in the report said the entire Bengaluru region should instead have been covered by one integrated plan prepared by a single institution. They warned that the division of planning responsibilities could create conflicts in land-use proposals and infrastructure planning.
The problem is not limited to administrative neatness. Planning boundaries influence what can be approved, protected, widened or reserved. A road network planned within one jurisdiction may need continuity in another. A civic amenity site may serve residents beyond the authority that controls it. Development at the edge of one planning area can create additional demand for transport and public services in adjoining areas. Without a mechanism to reconcile these decisions, a plan can be internally consistent within its boundary but difficult to implement across the city.
Bengaluru’s existing planning situation already reflects the consequences of delay. The city is still using RMP 2015, although it was prepared in 2007. The report links the prolonged delay in preparing a new plan to unplanned growth, shortages of connecting roads and the disappearance of open spaces. These are not separate failures. They show how land-use decisions, street networks and public land protection are connected over time.
The figures also reveal the scale of the coordination challenge. The GBA’s proposed planning area of 709 square kilometres is substantially larger than the BDA area of 427 square kilometres. But the combined 1,136 square kilometres does not represent the entire urban footprint described in the report. Bengaluru has expanded beyond both boundaries, raising a further question about how growth outside the two jurisdictions will be treated in metropolitan planning.
The source does not establish whether the two authorities will use a common spatial database, shared planning standards, a joint approval mechanism or a unified infrastructure investment framework. It also does not specify how conflicts between the GBA plan and the BDA’s proposed RMP 2041 will be resolved. These are material gaps because the value of a master plan depends not only on its preparation but also on the authority responsible for enforcing it and coordinating investments around it.
The GBA’s committee and the appointment of consultants provide an administrative structure for preparing its plan. The BDA’s tender process provides a separate structure for its own document. Neither process, as described in the supplied report, establishes a single decision-making framework for the whole urban region. The distinction matters because the planning problem identified by the report is regional: the city’s growth has crossed the boundaries of the institutions now preparing plans for it.
The next year will therefore be important for more than the delivery of a document. It will show whether Bengaluru’s new planning system can align jurisdiction, land use and infrastructure. The GBA’s one-year timetable is a clear milestone, but the BDA’s consultant selection and the relationship between the two master plans remain unresolved in the supplied material.
The evidence currently confirms three things. First, the GBA is undertaking its first master plan for approximately 709 square kilometres at a consultancy cost of ₹15.22 crore. Second, the BDA is separately preparing a Revised Master Plan 2041 for about 427 square kilometres. Third, experts have identified the division itself as a potential source of conflict. What remains uncertain is how the two plans will be integrated, how development beyond the stated boundaries will be addressed and which institution will ultimately coordinate Bengaluru’s urban growth.
