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Divert RLA revenue to MC for road repairs, Chandigarh mayor appeals to governor again
Amid Chandigarh MC’s debilitating financial crunch, essential road carpeting work in the city has not been undertaken for the second consecutive season this year after no repairs through 2024
Reiterating a long-standing demand, Chandigarh mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla has once again requested Punjab governor and UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria to allocate at least 50% of the revenue generated by the Registering and Licensing Authority (RLA) to the cash-strapped municipal corporation (MC) for the maintenance of city roads and parking areas.
Amid MC’s debilitating financial crunch, essential road carpeting work in the city has not been undertaken for the second consecutive season this year after no repairs through 2024.
Road carpeting is typically carried out in the October-November and March-April periods, as these months provide the ideal weather conditions for the process — before peak summer or winter set in and after the moisture-heavy monsoon season ends.
However, despite completing paperwork for nearly 400 km of roads that urgently need repairs, tenders for road repairs remain unopened due to lack of funds, as per MC officials.
The civic body maintains a road network of 2,000 km throughout Chandigarh. This includes various types of roads, such as V-3 (sector dividing road), V-4 (shopping street),V-5 (sector circulation road), V-6 (access roads to houses), and parking lots in various sectors, rehabilitation colonies and villages.
In a letter sent on Tuesday, Babla pointed out that MC was responsible for maintaining nearly 60% of Chandigarh’s total road length. Despite the scale of this responsibility, MC receives no specific share from RLA’s annual revenue, which is estimated to be around ₹350 crore.
“The Chandigarh administration may pay the share of tax to the MC under Section 90 (6) (b) of Municipal Corporation Act, 1976, as extended to Chandigarh. As per the sections, after the close of each year, the government may pay to the MC whole or such part as it may determine of the tax collected by it ; and under the Punjab Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1924, as applicable to Chandigarh, from every person keeping a motor vehicle within the local area of the city,” she wrote.
“The allocation of at least 50% of the RLA’s revenue will allow us to maintain roads, parkings and pavements more effectively. The funds will be used exclusively for this purpose,” Babla stated.
“This is another request to the administrator, who patiently heard our concerns. He assured us of full support and said the matter will be taken up with the ministry of home affairs for a quick decision,” Babla told HT.
Arduous road to fiscal recovery
This isn’t the first time the mayor has made such an appeal.
Since assuming power on January 30 this year, Babla has placed the demand before the governor multiple times at meetings.
During the April 22 meeting with the governor, Babla, along with the city’s last 10 mayors, among other suggestions, had also collectively demanded that revenue-generating departments, such as the RLA and electricity duty collection, be handed over to MC to make it financially self-reliant.
The much-needed reprieve is also one of several recommendations made by the 4th Delhi Finance Commission in 2014 to strengthen MC’s finances.
Over the past decade, successive mayors, councillors and MC officials have been requesting that either the RLA be brought under MC’s jurisdiction or a statutory share of its revenue be transferred to the civic body as per law—demands that have yet to evoke response from the UT administration.
In March, in a bid to manage the financial crisis, MC had also proposed transferring 262 km of V3 roads under its jurisdiction to the UT administration for maintenance. However, the proposal was rejected by the House.
