In the midst of the second wave,the Bengaluru municipal body has a new chief

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Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the municipal body governing the Karnataka capital, will have a new commissioner and an administrator starting April 1, as the city is witnessing steady daily growth in new Covid-19 cases. Which is considered the second wave of the pandemic by many experts.

N Manjunatha Prasad will be replaced as commissioner by senior bureaucrat Gaurav Gupta. After the term of the council came to an end in September last year, Gupta, a 1990-batch IAS officer, took over as the administrator of the BBMP.

According to a government notification issued on Wednesday, Gupta will also serve as the Additional Chief Secretary of the government’s commerce and industries department.

In the meantime, Prasad has been promoted to Principal Secretary in the government’s revenue department, where he will be responsible for Disaster Management, Bhoomi, and Urban Property Ownership Records.

Rakesh Singh, Additional Chief Secretary (Water Resources Department), will replace Gupta as BBMP administrator while elections for the BBMP Council are still pending.

However, this isn’t the first time the BBMP’s top leadership has shifted due to the pandemic. As the overall Covid-19 tally in Karnataka was edging past the one-lakh mark in July 2020, the civic body got a new president. This time around, the state’s overall caseload is approaching one million cases.

Through an order issued by James Tharakan, the Under Secretary of the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms, as many as 13 other senior bureaucrats were also transferred to new roles. The news came only a day after the Urban Development Department announced the selection of eight IAS officers as “Zonal Joint Commissioners,” tasked with overseeing operations at the zonal level. This is a change from the previous title of “Joint Commissioner.”

Randeep D (Mahadevapura and Yelahanka), P Rajendra Cholan (Bommanahalli), Manoj Jain (BBMP East), Basavaraju S (BBMP West), Tulsi Maddineni (BBMP South), Ravindra SG (Dasarahalli), and B Reddy Shankar Babu are the current BBMP zonal commissioners, according to the sources.