Citizens’ Action Forum is a group of concerned citizens and civil society leaders interested in bringing transparency and accountability by increasing citizen participation matters of Governance through structured citizen participation. They are a registered non profit civil society organisation.
The group’s focus was to reinforce and support the virtual expansion of citizen participation in every sphere in Bengaluru by creating an alliance of individuals and associations which will speak out for the cause of good governance among the city’s decision-makers and stimulate dialogue among civil society. This was proposed to be achieved through constant and constructive dialogue with the four estates of Democracy namely the Legislature, the Bureaucracy, the Judiciary and the Media. They join hands with these four estates and call ourselves “The Fifth Estate”.

Their Programs have been:

Vote Bengaluru

Their first major campaign was in the realm of Electoral reforms in association with other civil society organisations namely PAC, CIVIC, KKNSS & Swabhimana. They were supported by former CEX of India Sri T N Seshan and Retired Chief Justice of India Sri M N Venkatachaliah. They invited leaders of major political parties for big public meetings, and also had assembly constituency level meetings with all the contesting candidates coming together on a common platform to address the concerns of the citizens with respect to Electoral Expenses and programmes for their constituencies.
Suggestions To Kasturirangan Committee
The committee was set up by the Government of Karnataka to suggest a suitable Governance structure for BBMP. Their major demand was that the Committee should come out with their responses to the various objections they had raised and make it available in the Public Domain.
Fight Against Sakrama Act
GoK came out with SAKRAMA BILL to regularise all unauthorised buildings in the urban areas of the state by levying a penalty and they justified this illegality by stating this was to augment the dwindling resources of BBMP. Unfortunately in their haste to raise resources the Govt proposed a very defective bill which would result in creating more problems than it solved. For example it proposed to levy penalties on the owners who had violated the provisions but never sought to punish the officers of BBMP and the builders who had connived with the officials. They organised an intensive interaction attended by more than 600 citizens and many politicians and authorities where they presented the problems with the proposed legislation. However the Government went ahead with the introduction of the bill without any amendments and passed the same. Hence they decided to take legal recourse. One of their member organisations ABHYUDAYA which is a federation of RWAs of Padmanabhanagar filed a PIL in the High Court of Karnataka and successfully obtained a stay against the implementation of the SAKRAMA scheme. The stay is still operative and the GOK is yet to file its counter affidavit.
Successfuly Ensured That GOK Drops The “Capital Value System For Assesing The Property Taxes In Bangalore”
CAF took up a massive campaign for almost a year and was successful in persuading the Government to drop the proposal of introducing the CVS system and revert to the earlier ARV system under self assessment scheme. They opposed any hike in the tax rate and instead suggested that BBMP should bring in all the properties under its net and increase the collection instead of taxing the honest tax payer.