Delhi’s three municipal corporations — north, south and east — are likely to merge soon as Cabinet on Tuesday approved its unification bill. The bill is likely to be brought up in Parliament this week.
The national capital has five local bodies namely the North, East and South Delhi municipal corporations, the Delhi Cantonment Board and the New Delhi Municipal Council. The majority of Delhi’s area is covered by the North, South and East Delhi corporations. These three corporations were known as a single entity as Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) before 2012.
The MCD was trifurcated in 2012 by the then Congress government led by Sheila Dikshit, in an attempt to make inroads into the civic bodies, which had become a BJP bastion, as well as to dilute the powers of a single powerful mayor in the city. The Delhi Municipal Act, 1957 was amended by the Parliament in 2012 to trifurcate the unified MCD.
Reacting to the development, AAP’s national spokesperson said, “Unification of 3 MCDs could have been done long back and could have been done anytime. This is simply a ploy to delay the pending elections of MCD. BJP is scared of losing MCD elections in Delhi.”
Until 2012, the unified MCD had 22 departments, each headed by a senior bureaucrat and one engineer-in-chief who reported to the commissioner. After the trifurcation in 2012, everything tripled.
Meanwhile, the Resident Welfare Associations has called for an audit of the performance of municipal departments and more involvement of civil society in the unification process.
In a letter to Delhi Lt Governor Ani Baijal on Monday, the United Resident Joint Action of Delhi (URJA) welcomed the announcement of unification of the three municipalities, but expressed concerns over the methodology “with which the process of unification of municipality is undergoing”.
“The municipal corporation was trifurcated in 2012 without any consultation from civil societies, including Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs). There is no accountability in the municipal cooperations. We are short of funds and there is no trust in the bodies. MCDs’ performance should be audited to understand the problem and people should be apprised of the issues,” URJA president Atul Goel told PTI.
“The city may suffer again as the process of unification is being carried out without taking into confidence the civil society and without any concrete exchange of dialogue in the public domain by the central government and its authorities,” he alleged.
Early this month, the State Election Commission had said the Union government was planning to bring a bill in the Budget Session of parliament to unify the three municipal corporations of Delhi and since the poll panel was examining the communication from Baijal, it had decided to defer the announcement of election schedule of the civic body.
Echoing similar concerns, B S Vohra, the head of East Delhi RWA, said RWAs were always against the trifurcation of MCDs, but it was done anyway. “It is good news that they have decided to unify the MCDs. But we feel there should be more participation of civil societies. We suggest that RWA members should be part of the decision-making body of MCDs to ensure proper implementation,” he said.
(With PTI inputs)
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