BJP councillors hope for a central package for Delhi’s civic bodies

BJP councillor Narender Chawla, a former mayor of SDMC, said they had sent a report detailing the current financial status and the problems with the existing structure to the Union home ministry, and added that they were hopeful that the Union government will provide a one-time relief package.

A day after the Lok Sabha passed the bill to reunify the three civic bodies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) municipal councillors in Delhi on Thursday said that they were hopeful that the central government will release a special financial package of ₹16,000 crores for the MCDs.

Aam Aadmi Party supporters during a protest against BJP for postponing the Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) elections on March 14. AAP has maintained that the merger was just a ploy by the BJP-led central government to delay the MCD elections that were scheduled to be held in April. (HT Archive)

BJP councillor Narender Chawla, a former mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, said they had sent a report detailing the current financial status and the problems with the existing structure to the Union home ministry, and added that they were hopeful that the Union government will provide a one-time relief package.

The report was compiled by the three civic bodies and was sent to the Centre on March 24. HT has seen the report.

“We are hopeful that a committee will be constituted to act as a bridge between the existing set up and the new corporation. Delhi being the capital of the nation needs a sustainable financial model to manage its affairs. The liabilities on the three corporations continue to rise. At the time of trifurcation in 2012, the liabilities were ₹1,831 crore and the commissioner had requested a one time grant to clear it. The state government at that time gave us a loan instead and we are still paying interest on it in the form of deductions in basic tax assignment. Similar situation should not be repeated,” Chawla said.

The poor financial health of the three MCDs were among the major arguments put up by the BJP to support the reunification of the corporations. However, the Aam Aadmi Party, which is in power in the Delhi government, has maintained that the merger was just a ploy by the BJP-led central government to delay the MCD elections that were scheduled to be held in April.

SDMC standing committee chairman Col (retd) BK Oberoi said a simple merger will not solve the problem, as the three MCDs have a huge deficit which needs to be cleared before the unification process.

“According to our interpretation, the change of term ’government’ in the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act to ‘central government’ should ensure that taxes and fee would be distributed by the central government, instead of the state government. A package would definitely be provided to make corporation sustainable,” he said.

According to the report sent by the MCDs, the total liabilities of the three civic bodies amount to ₹16,415 crore, of which ₹3,474.2 crore are owed to Delhi government on which 10% annual interest is being paid. The liabilities related to pay and pensions of the employees stand at ₹1,694.7 crore, contractors are owed ₹1,665.9 crore and other arrears stand at ₹9,580.7 crore.

The AAP and the Congress, however, said that unification bill will barely serve any purpose, and added that even a unified corporation will be running in loss.

AAP MCD incharge Durgesh Pathak said the the real problem is not money, but corruption. He added that the BJP took shelter in unification since it knows fully well that it would have been defeated in the MCD elections. “Money is not the problem. Corruption is at the root cause of the corporation’s financial crisis. If the Delhi government can increase its budget from ₹25,000 crore to ₹75,000 crore over the past seven years, why can’t the MCDs do it? There is a lot of leakage in the system. The North MCD alone can raise additional ₹1,500 crore if property taxes are charged from all households under its jurisdiction,” he said.

Abhishek Dutt, state congress vice-president and a councillor in SDMC said that the bill does not resolve the main issue of the finance allocation, and it cannot remove the powers of the Delhi finance commission which are vested in the Delhi government. “What will we achieve by saving ₹150 crore as has been stated by the government in the Parliament. The tax share will continue to come from the state government, and the tussle will remain as it is. They could have gone back to pre-1990s model of a metropolitan council to fix accountability but this (unification) solves nothing.”