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Chandigarh: Councillors push agenda to give more teeth to mayor, councillors
The agenda will be sent to the UT administration for approval, and then further to the Union ministry of home affairs for the final decision
Chandigarh In the last house meeting chaired by outgoing mayor Anup Gupta, the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) unanimously passed a resolution to push for a separate ‘Municipal Corporation Act’ for the city and more powers to the mayor, senior deputy mayor, deputy mayor and councillors.
The agenda will be sent to the UT administration for approval, and then further to the Union ministry of home affairs for the final decision.
If approved, Chandigarh may have a single mayor, with more administrative powers, for the whole five-year term.
At present, the mayor is elected for a one-year term from among the elected councillors, with the post reserved for women councillors in the first and fourth terms, general category councillors in the second and fifth term and for schedule caste councillors in the third term. This arrangement is in keeping with the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, which has been extended to Chandigarh.
City’s own MC Act
The agenda titled, ‘Amendment in Municipal Corporation Act’ was brought up by BJP councillor Mahesh Inder Singh Sidhu.
It read: “The Municipal Corporation Act of Chandigarh was enacted as an extension to the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act and that too with dilution of many sections, powers and functions, rendering the Chandigarh MC in general and the public representatives in particular as mere statue figures with not much power or say in the functioning of the city and policy matters. The municipal corporation is the only elected body in Chandigarh after the Member of the Parliament but all the policy and other important matters pertaining to the city are decided by bureaucracy, which goes against the basic tenets of democracy and the Constitution of India.”
“Therefore, it is proposed that the Municipal Corporation Act be suitably amended to give more powers to the elected body and provisions like ‘mayor in council’ etc be incorporated into it. Even the name of the act should be Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Act and not an extension Act,” the agenda further read.
The ‘mayor in council’ provision provides administrative powers to the mayor, like tendering of projects and hiring of staff, which are presently being held by municipal commissioner.
Long-pending demand
City councillors have been demanding that the mayor’s term be extended to five years, stating that the present one-year term leaves little scope for seeing through projects or making an impact.
Congress councillor Gurbax Rawat, said, “In 2014, councillors had studied the powers of ‘mayor in council’ in Kolkata. Since then, the issue has been taken up multiple times in the house but only verbally. This is the first time that the agenda has been tabled and also approved. In the mayor-in-council provisions, there is also provision for direct election of the mayor by the public in which people will be asked to cast two votes—one for mayor and one for the area councillor. The provision also gives the mayor the power to write service reports of the officers.”
Mayor Anup Gupta, whose term is set to end on January 16, said, “The policies of Chandigarh are currently framed by bureaucrats and thus not citizen-friendly. Elected people of the city should have more powers. Also, Chandigarh should have its own act and rules, which we plan to make after detailed decisions.”
Chandigarh MC Act provisions
· Five-year term of mayor
· Direct elections of mayor
· Administrative powers to mayor
· Power to write service report of the officers
