All the PM’s men on the job

Delhi’s proposed Urban Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) will now be debated by a Group of Ministers following reservations over its role by some Cabinet ministers.

Updated on: Apr 7, 2010, 23:44:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Delhi’s proposed Urban Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) will now be debated by a Group of Ministers following reservations over its role by some Cabinet ministers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has constituted a Group of Ministers headed by Home Minister P. Chidambaram to chalk out a plan to decongest Delhi roads and provide the city with international quality public transport system.

At a meeting held in March, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, who is also an MP from Delhi, wanted to know whether the proposed authority will have powers to shift the wholesale market in Chandni Chowk and reduce congestion.

He also wanted to know which body would deal with lack of parking facilities at metro stations. Plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia wanted to know about the powers of UMTA to ensure that all agencies in Delhi obey the directions of the authority.

Urban Transport Minister Jaipal Reddy had some issues over functioning of the proposed authority. Unlike most cities, all agencies dealing with transport, except railways, are not under the Delhi government, which has proposed legislation for setting up an authority.

In Delhi, the police, Delhi Development Authority, municipal corporation of Delhi and New Delhi Municipal Council are not under the control of Delhi government.

Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi Tejendra Khanna explained the proposed UMTA would give directives and will have a comprehensive look at the policies, plans and proposals from a “holistic point of view”.

The Delhi government has proposed UMTA on the lines of Land Transport Authority of Singapore and Transport for London, having powers to regulate traffic within and the neighbourhood of the city.

“UMTA is envisaged as a superior planning body… One of the responsibilities of the body will be to clear individual plans as a part of the comprehensive transport plan,” Delhi government officials told the GoM.

Chidambaram said the proposed UMTA would need further deliberations and for that a copy of the draft law should be submitted to GoM.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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