Letters: Crime & commitment

This refers to the report "Delhi in disarray as 'anarchist' CM takes his govt to street" (January 21). Delhi, as a regular state, is a misnomer. It can neither superintend law and order in its precincts, nor is it free to enact laws without the approval of the Centre, reducing it to a large municipal corporation akin to Mumbai. Delhi, with a budget of Rs 35,000 crore, compares the Mumbai corporation under its Commissioner at Rs 28,000 crore. Chief ministers of Delhi were content with titular trappings and a mute witness to the capital's spiralling crime graph. The Delhi citizen was falling between two stools since the police reports to the home ministry, under a vague chain of command. The current chief minister of Delhi rides on the wave of change and decides to upend a failed setup that his predecessors had tolerated in silence. Questionable though his methods, the objective is as important. A unified responsibility over law and order can only help the citizen. Either empower Delhi as a full-fledged state or revert it to a corporation. Mumbai has a better crime record than Delhi, because there is a single-point responsibility for civic services on one hand, and law and order on the other. It is time for a laid-back nation to not seek an anodyne in the status quo but be ready to meet change.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad

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