Greater Bengaluru Office Building in Bengaluru. | Photo credit: FILE PHOTO
Efforts to draw up the Revised Master Plan – 2041 by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) have been hit by the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, which makes the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) the Local Planning Authority (LPA) for the 712 sq km GBA area.
A new proposal is not expected until 2027, which will be 12 years after the deadline of the last RMP. The valid master plan was drawn up in 2005.
Earlier, BDA was the LPA for the entire 1,294 sq km Bengaluru Metropolitan Area (BMA), including the GBA area. Now GBA is the LPA for its area and BDA is the LPA for the fringe areas of the BMA spread over 582 sq km.
GBA has invited tenders to hire a consultant to develop the RMP-2041 proposal and the tender process closes on March 6. Once the consultant is selected, they will be given 11 months to come up with a new RMP, after which it will be submitted to the government and open to the public, said Sunil Kumar P., chief city planner, GBA.
The BDA issued similar tenders twice in 2025 when preparing the BMA-wide RMP. When the BDA scraps them, it is ready to float tenders this week to hire a consultant to prepare the RMP for the reduced area, said MC Shashikumar, member (planning), BDA.
BDA has teamed up at the Karnataka State Remote Sensing Applications Center (KSRSAC) to prepare a base map for the BMA in 2025. While the base map for the GBA area is ready and will be shared with the GBA to form the starting point for the GBA RMP-2041, a new base map will have to be created for the new BDA area. KSRSAC is also likely to be tasked with creating this base map, sources said.
Coordination between two RMPs
With two RMPs for the BMA, there are concerns about coordination, especially as the city has already crossed GBA boundaries into BDA areas. “We have to design both the plans in complete synergy so that the transition from one plan to the other is seamless on the ground,” said Mr. Sunil.
Government sources said that either a coordination committee with town planners from GBA and BDA will be formed for this purpose, or the committees to oversee the RMP process in both bodies will have members from the other body.
First RMP with all stakeholders on board
Urban planners and civic activists welcomed the GBA becoming an LPA, primarily for two reasons; planning falls under the local government in accordance with the 74th Amendment of the Constitution of India and for the first time all parastatal bodies of the city would be involved in planning.
Earlier master plans were criticized for not including parastatals such as Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL), Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) etc., nor was it binding on them. This meant that the RMP became a mere spatial plan rather than a holistic plan for the growth of the city.
In fact, the earlier proposal of RMP-2031 was withdrawn by the BDA as BMRCL’s Comprehensive Mobility Plan opted for Transit Oriented Development (TOD), densifying areas along metro corridors providing higher Floor Area Ratio (FAR), which was not part of the RMP-2031 proposal.
Since there are still no civic polls, RMP-2041 is likely to once again be run by bureaucrats rather than elected representatives. If the five corporations are elected to the councils later this year, it remains to be seen how councilors and the five corporations will be involved in drafting the RMP.
Published – 1 March 2026 21:38 IST
