State of the capital

Bill enhancing Delhi LG's power debases electoral democracy

The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which the ministry of home affairs tabled in Parliament this week, is another example of the current government’s centralising proclivities and disregard for democratic norms and institutions. The Bill seeks to establish the primacy of the Lieutenant Governor (LG), an appointed agent of the central government, over Delhi’s elected state government, and overturn the spirit and letter of both a 20-year constitutional amendment and a three-year-old Supreme Court verdict.

Delhi’s special status as a Union Territory with an elected legislature was established with the introduction of Article 239AA through the 69th constitutional amendment. The 1991 Act that followed this amendment set out the powers and duties of the LG and the chief minister and the terms of engagement between the two. In essence, the central government through the LG has direct control over land, the police and public order. On other matters, the LG is bound by the aid and advice of the council of ministers. The new Bill, however, makes it mandatory for the elected government to seek the LG’s advice before taking any executive action. The Bill is worrying on several levels. For one, it renders ineffective in one stroke the powers of elected representatives. This restriction has added significance when the party dominating the elected government differs from the one at the Centre.

There is no doubt that the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) strong hold over the state, driven by its policies of free or heavily subsidised water, electricity, health and education services has challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party’s power in the national capital. The AAP holds 62 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly. It is also obvious that this latest amendment has been provoked by the tumultuous relationship between Delhi’s ruling AAP Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and both the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance between 2014 and 2018. Between spending the nights on the pavement in Lutyens’ Delhi to protest the corruption in the Delhi Police, and occupying the visitor’s lounge of the LG’s official residence during a nine-day sit-in protest seeking full statehood for Delhi, Mr Kejriwal has certainly challenged the limits to the LG’s discretionary powers in an unconventional manner.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the LG’s concurrence is not required except for police, public order and land. The apex court also clarified the LG’s status as that of an administrator, not a governor of a state. Though the state government read the ruling as a carte blanche not to send files to the LG, the fact is that Delhi’s hybrid status is untenable. It is evident in the constricted land market, and the fact that the capital has one of the worst law and order records, principally because the police are co-opted into protecting VIPs, ministers and MPs rather than the state’s citizenry. Enhancing the powers of an unelected representative is unlikely to solve the burgeoning problems of this dynamic, expanding metropolis any more than constraining the ambit of an elected legislature. The power-sharing arrangement was always unsatisfactory, but vesting less civic power in the people is hardly the answer in a democracy.