Hyderabad: While the draft CURE Bill 2026 is projected as a replacement for the seven-decade-old GHMC Act, it falls well short of the governance reforms introduced under Karnataka’s Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) Act, 2024.An assessment by Bengaluru-based Janaagraha awarded the CURE Bill a score of just 28%, compared to 38% for the GBA Act. The assessment points out that Hyderabad still lacks a single institution responsible for planning the city as one integrated urban region, leaving transport, housing, drainage, and land use to be handled by multiple agencies in isolation.“A city works best when the people you elect have genuine power to fix things, and when residents have a real voice in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods. The Bill should strengthen the role of mayors and councils, open up meaningful ways for citizens to participate, and set up independent checks that hold the system accountable,” the assessment found.According to the assessment, the Bill should clearly define the roles of the Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC), Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA), and the chief minister-led apex governance council to avoid overlaps and improve coordination. It also stressed that the apex council should include adequate representation from elected local body representatives and function as a coordinating body that complements, rather than replaces, the MPC.Srikanth Viswanathan, chief executive officer of Janaagraha, said Hyderabad has an opportunity to lead the way for India in ushering in a genuinely meaningful metropolitan governance model for governing larger cities.“Bengaluru looked promising a few years ago but eventually squandered the opportunity by bringing in a poorly drafted GBA Act. The CURE Bill in its current form, too, will not achieve much. We need a full-time secretariat for the apex council, a dedicated political owner like a Hyderabad minister to handle a critical metropolitan powerhouse, directly elected mayors, and meaningful empowerment of the three individual municipalities in terms of powers and funds,” he said.
