The era of three MCDs at an end
The terms of the three municipal corporations in Delhi are now coming to an end, marking the culmination of a tumultuous 10-year period marked by financial tussles that marred a move meant to improve the Capital’s civic amenities. The Centre will now appoint a special officer to run the affairs of the unified civic body constituted by amending the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act until fresh elections are held.
The elections, however, will have to wait for a comprehensive delimitation exercise since the new law provides for a maximum of 250 municipal wards -- fewer than the current 272.
Based on when they took oath in May 2017 after the civic polls, the term of the North MCD got over on Tuesday, the South MCD’s term will finish on Wednesday, and the East MCD will complete its tenure on Saturday.
A decade after the state’s Sheila Dikshit government trifurcated the Municipal Corporation of Delhi into three separate civic bodies, the current BJP-led Union government brought them together again with the Parliament passing the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022.
MCDs start wrapping up
The three MCDs have either wrapped up or started wrapping up their operations. A senior municipal secretariat official said that councillors will no longer be able to use the office space at the Civic Centre, the MCD headquarters, or be able avail other benefits. “Most of them have already handed in their laptops,” he said.
Jogi Ram Jain, standing committee chairman of the North MCD, said all the privileges of the councillors as elected representatives will cease to exist with the end of the civic body’s tenure. “All the committee offices have been vacated. There is still no clarity on the appointment of special officer, and there is a proposal that mayors may be allowed to continue till the Centre appoints the officer,” he added.
The East MCD mayor, Shyam Sunder Agarwal, has organised a farewell gathering for the families of municipal workers.
A municipal law officer said that the DMC Act, 1957 has no provision for the extension of the tenures of the civic body or the councillors. “Section 4 clearly states that the Corporation, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and no longer,” the officer said, quoting the law.
A senior SDMC official said that the policymaking powers of the municipal committees and the mayor already ceased to exist from March 31, 2022 onwards, after which no standing committee meeting or general body meeting has taken place.
“We are also eagerly waiting for the special officer appointment as many policy proposals are pending for over a month. The new unified MCD will start shape only after the special officer takes over and decides the granular details of the merger,”
the SDMC official said.
Task cut out for special officer
The first task for the special officer will be to tackle the financial health of the three municipal bodies. All three have massive budgetary deficits and the North and East MCDs have salary pendencies. While the east civic body has not paid its staff for five months, North MCD employees have not got salaries for three months.
There have been allegations of rampant corruption and administrative inefficiencies even as the BJP-ruled civic bodies have consistently blamed the poor financial condition on the Delhi government delaying the release of funds -- a charge it has strongly refuted.
AP Khan, convener of the Confederation of MCD Employees Unions, said that the corporations, now at the verge of unification, are at one of the worst phase of salary-pension delay crisis. “Now that the central government has been made completely responsible for the MCD, they should immediately release a financial package to alleviate this humanitarian crisis. Thousands of employees have not been paid for almost half a year. Retired pensioners are struggling to survive. This has never happened in the history of unified MCD from 1957 till 2012,” Khan said.
A full circle for MCD
Things have come a full circle for the local body governance structure in the capital city. After almost 55 years of existence as a unified body, MCD -- the second largest urban local body in the world after Tokyo Metropolitan area, -- was trifurcated into three bodies in 2011.
The Congress government of the day cited reasons such as growing population and a vast geographical spread as the reasons for trifurcation. The government said the move would will lead to decentralisation of administration for better delivery and governance, with each commissioner overseeing services for a smaller area.
But things did not go as planned. Municipal officials said the trifurcation led to unequal distribution of resources with a majority of posh colonies falling under SDMC. They added almost 87% of the EDMC region’s population lives in unplanned, unauthorised areas and contribute very little to direct revenue. All five major municipal hospitals came under North MCD and require high recurring capital input.
KS Mehra, who was the last commissioner of the unified body, said that the 10-year experiment of trifurcation has failed. “This experiment could not succeed. The objective was to deliver the services more efficiently. Administratively, it did not change anything as number of zones remained unchanged, and the burden on resources increased,” he added.
Mehra said that the focus of the new administration should be to increase revenue, make the local body self-reliant and allow better allocation of resources. “The unified MCD never faced lack of resources for development work, education or salaries. It can be achieved again,” he added.