Cabinet clears move to unify Delhi’s MCDs

The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022, is likely to be tabled in Parliament next week, said an official familiar with the development. He did not share any specific details of the bill.

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a proposal for the merger of the three municipal corporations (MCDs) of Delhi -- a decision that came nine days after the Centre sent a communication to the Delhi state election commission, leading the panel to postpone the announcement of the schedule for the civic polls due next month.

MCD elections were scheduled to be held in April. (Raj K Raj/HT)

The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022, is likely to be tabled in Parliament next week, said an official familiar with the development. He did not share any specific details of the bill.

The municipal elections were expected to be held in April with the term of the three corporations coming to an end on May 18, and the deferment of the announcement of the poll schedule has triggered a massive war of words between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the principal contender, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules the three corporations. While the AAP said that the BJP was “running away” from the elections knowing it was going lose badly, the BJP argued that reunification will reform the functioning of the MCDs.

A state election commission official, who asked not to be named, said on Tuesday that the commission still has enough time (till April 18) to take a call on announcing the schedule of the MCD polls. “The contents of the Bill for unification of the three corporations is not yet known. It is also not known whether the number of wards will remain 272 or the number of wards will change, triggering a need for a fresh delimitation exercise,” said the official.

Senior AAP leader Atishi on Tuesday questioned the timing of the move. “The BJP is in power for the last 15 years in MCDs, and for seven years at the Centre. Why did they think of unification (of the MCDs) only after the exit poll results for the Punjab assembly elections were released?” she asked.

“Elections were postponed only once in the history of the country when Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency out of her fear to face the elections. The BJP is doing the same today,” she added.

Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta refuted the allegations. “This (unification) is only going to strengthen the civic body and the unified corporation will be able to provide better services to people. We welcome the decision. The Delhi government has made the corporations financially weak by not giving funds in the past seven years. With this decision, 2.5 lakh employees will be able to get salaries on time,” he said.

On March 17, the AAP moved the Supreme Court against the “flagrant meddling” of the Centre in the conduct of the municipal polls in Delhi using “brazen influence” over the state election commission (SEC) to postpone the elections due next month. The petition has named only the SEC as a party and sought a direction to hold the elections before the expiry of the terms of the three municipal corporations.

Former Union minister and Congress general secretary Ajay Maken said that while a merger will be “administratively beneficial” and “improve the financial position” of the MCDs, the Union government should have brought this bill earlier to avoid a delay in elections. He added that the BJP-led Centre and the AAP-led Delhi government should “avoid blame game” and ensure elections as soon as possible.

The MCDs in Delhi are almost as key in terms of the city’s administrative functioning as the Delhi government is, with the three corporations providing an array of services to residents in their areas, including basic sanitation, registration of births and deaths, issuing trade licences, and sanctioning building plans.

The MCD was divided into three bodies -- North, South and East -- in 2012 by the then Sheila Dikshit government in Delhi, arguing that it will improve overall administration and help bring the municipalities closer to the people in a city as vast as Delhi.

However, in the past 15 years, the municipal corporations have faced multiple issues. Two of them, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, have gone bankrupt several times as their liabilities have mounted way above their actual budgets. This has led to delay in the payment of salaries and in the implementation of new schemes, causing repeated strikes by the staff and outrage among the citizenry.

The unified MCD, with its headquarters at the Town Hall in Chandni Chowk, was the second-largest civic body in the world, according to senior municipal officials. When it was trifurcated, the South body inherited areas where the maximum revenue came from. This is why, some experts say, the East MCD, which had most unauthorised colonies and slums in its jurisdiction, never broke even and survived mostly on grants from the government.

Proponents of the unification also say that since the intended objective of trifurcation has failed, it would be wise to merge the three bodies into one entity and bring in reforms to provide the city with efficient civic governance. But it is the timing of the move — on the eve of the elections — that has become a bone of contention.

Subhash Arya, the former mayor and veteran municipal councillor from BJP who has worked with MCD for over 25 years, said reunification of the MCDs will be beneficial in the overall administration of the Capital. “It will save additional expenses as the number of committees as well as top level posts will be reduced by one-third. Administratively, more senior rank officials will head the departments who will be able to better coordinate with state and central governments. It will also create a uniformity in the rules and regulations across the city as well as the rate of levies and taxes,” he said.

But some experts say that while dividing the MCD was relatively easier since the Congress was in power both at the Centre and in Delhi, the process is not going to be smooth with two different parties in control.

A former Delhi government official, who was involved with trifurcation, said it was a long-drawn process with multiple negotiations taking place between the central and state governments between 2010 and 2012. An expert committee headed by former IAS officer K Dharmarajan was set up to come up with detailed policy outlining the contours of amendment to DMC Act, he said.

“Unifying the three MCDs again will take amendments to the DMC Act again. During Sheila Dikshit’s time, the Bill to trifurcate the MCDs was tabled in the Delhi Assembly and then was sent for the President’s assent. That time Congress was both in Delhi and the Centre, which is why it happened in close coordination between the two. However, in this case, since AAP has a majority in the Delhi assembly, the Centre might have gone for directly introducing a Bill to amend the DMC act in the Parliament,” the former official added.

Even as it may resolve some long-pending issues, the unification is set to come with its own problems, including the rearrangement of the bureaucracy as the new set up will have to bring three sets of officers on the same positions under one roof. Senior municipal officials said the government will have to draw a seniority list to see who is given what responsibility. “There cannot be three engineers-in-chief,” one official said. He added that it might also lead to disputes as some of the officers will have to be demoted to be accommodated into the new set-up.

The unification process will also have to deal with the reservation status of wards, allocation of office spaces, pending arrears owed by citizens in different parts of city based on different tax rates, rationalisation of personnel, and deciding on the authority of the corporations.