Division of civic body a political move: BJP

Coming down heavily on Delhi government’s decision to trifurcate the MCD, Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the move is politically motivated.

Coming down heavily on Delhi government’s decision to trifurcate the MCD, Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the move is politically motivated.

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“They have decided to split the MCD to get mileage in the municipal polls next year. We strongly oppose the move,” Delhi BJP chief Vijender Gupta said.

“The city government has unconstitutionally taken back the powers given to the civic body under Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, 1957 passed,” he added.

Gupta said after the trifurcation, the work in the MCD will become more complicated. It will also lead to discrimination by Delhi government among the three corporations and the people will suffer with financial burden of additional taxes, Gupta added.

Mayor Rajni Abbi also criticised the Delhi government’s proposal for creating three independent municipal corporations. Asking the union home minister to seriously view the whole issue and also take the MCD’s views into cognisance before reaching a decision.

“In the proposed structure, the executive wing will be stronger than the deliberative wing. Instead of increasing the powers of deliberative wing such as that of mayor, chairman of the Standing Committee, there is a proposal to give more powers to municipal commissioners. Through the proposal, all the powers will be taken away from the elected representatives and would be in the hands of bureaucrats,” said Abbi.

Abbi said that in the proposed three new corporations, Delhi will have to arrange Rs 2,000 crore extra per annum.

“There will be serious financial constraints to make the corporations run. These corporations would never be economically independent. East Delhi has hardly 10% of the revenue generation in the head of property tax, although one-third of the population of Delhi lives there,” she added.