Empowering councillors, autonomy on mayor’s agenda for meeting with CM

Gurugram The mayor will take up the issue of empowering councillors to undertake development work and the pending enforcement of the 74th Constitutional Amendment

Gurugram The mayor will take up the issue of empowering councillors to undertake development work and the pending enforcement of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, in Haryana, with the chief minister during a meeting next week.

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The decision was taken by the councillors of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) at a meeting in Sector 34 on Friday, to decide the possible agenda for the next House meeting and make a list of demands that could be presented to Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana chief minister.

Khattar has called all the seven mayors of Haryana for a meeting in Chandigarh on January 18.

Mayor Madhu Azad said that she has given a week’s time to all councillors to submit a list of their main queries and demands, which she can take up with the CM.

In addition, she further said that she has directed the MCG officials to submit to her a list of agendas that were passed in all MCG House meetings and are pending with the state government, so that she can take up the same with the CM and ask him to expedite it.

The councillors demanded that she raise the issue of giving powers to the councillors to carry out development works of ₹1 crore each in their respective wards, an agenda which was approved in their tenure’s first House meeting in November 2018.

Enforcement of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, will make the municipal corporation an autonomous body and resultantly, expedite civic projects

Councillors also asked the mayor to take up the issue on the proposal for building MCG’s main office in Sector 29. The MCG has been functioning out of a three-storey building owned by the Haryana Shahri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) in Sector 34 since February 2015, for which the civic body pays a monthly rent of ₹18 lakh.

Currently, all paperwork related to projects that are budgeted above ₹2.5 crore has to be sent by the municipal corporations to the Urban Local Bodies’ (ULB) headquarters in Panchkula for approval. Provided there are no queries raised by the ULB in the entire tendering, allotment, project planning and execution process, it takes a single project three to four months to get the final clearance.

“If you look at the neighbouring areas, such as cities in Punjab and Chandigarh, the governments and local administrations have enforced the 74th constitutional amendment in their respective states and Union Territories. We want the same to be enforced in Haryana as the MCG will no longer need to seek approval from ULB and can expedite civic projects in the city,” said Azad.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, also known as the Nagarpalika Act, was passed in the Indian Parliament in December 1992.

Other key decisions taken by councillors during the meeting were to decide upon the agendas that can be presented in the MCG’s next house meeting.

Among the key points agreed upon by the councillors was the decision to withdraw the responsibility of maintenance of parks and community centres from residents’ welfare associations and transfer the same to the MCG.

It was also decided that the responsibility of supervising every MCG employee related to cleaning, horticulture and civic works should be given to the councillors, and they should also be present at each work allotment, pertaining to cleaning and horticulture, issued by the MCG.

Councillors also decided that they will no longer send proposals passed in the House meeting to the ULB. Their other demands include the return all green belts, transferred to the GMDA, back to the MCG due to their alleged poor condition, financial assistance to residential societies and condominiums for setting up compost plants, forming a new MCG wing for preparing estimates for civic projects and the MCG taking up the maintenance of government schools falling under its jurisdiction.