Avoidable delay

MCD merger should have been done in time

The Bill tabled in Parliament to merge the three Delhi municipal corporations offers, prima facie, a sensible solution to the Union Territory’s sub-par urban service delivery. But both the details of the legislation and the role it plays in delaying municipal elections raise doubts about the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government’s intentions vis-à-vis the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules Delhi. There is no doubt that the decision to merge the three corporations, reversing a disastrous 10-year-old trifurcation under then chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s Congress government, will go a long way towards stabilising the urban body’s finances. The trifurcation resulted in a huge expansion of the salary bill as the number of administrative personnel grew three times, with each new corporation —in the east, north, and south —acquiring a commissioner, heads of 22 departments, and mayor and office without a commensurate increase in revenues. But even as these costs expanded, the uneven distribution of resources among the three created severe financial problems, which became worse due to their failure to increase revenue flows through improved coverage and administration of house taxes, in particular.

Among the three, the southern corporation is the most affluent in terms of revenues. In the eastern corporation, nearly 90 per cent of the population lived in unauthorised areas so the contribution to municipal revenues was slim. In a unified corporation, the uneven distribution of resources was leavened between the better-resourced southern entity and the northern and eastern ones. The result from the creation of three financially asymmetric corporations was a sharp deterioration in urban services as salary delays —sometimes between four and six months —saw municipal and sanitation workers simply walking off the job. No surprise, all three corporations have figured towards the bottom of a performance assessment of 48 urban local bodies.

But if a legislated merger is a sound move, the administrative provisions of the Bill are far less so. In fact, the Bill largely seeks to override the powers of the elected state government in favour of the Centre. For instance, the Bill proposes to exclude the Delhi government from decisions on funds, on building bye-laws, and holding municipal officers accountable for corruption. The Bill also proposes to reduce the number of councillors in all three corporations from 272 to 250, a move that will require a delimitation exercise to demarcate new municipal zones. This delimitation programme would delay elections even further —they were originally scheduled for April but postponed by the Election Commission, a decision that could best have been avoided. But the Bill also excludes state government participation in this exercise. Significantly, the Bill allows for appointment by the Centre of a “special officer”, who will preside over the corporation till the elected corporators get to meet.

Given the fact that the delimitation exercise itself will take many months, this delay would put the Centre and the BJP in pole position for a considerable period of time. This is a somewhat transparent attempt to delay elections at a time when the BJP holds an incumbent disadvantage in terms of its performance in the three corporations, and at a time when AAP has gained traction with its victory in the Punjab Assembly elections. At a time when Delhi sorely needs efficient delivery of basic municipal services, the Centre appears to be focusing on deploying a legislative hammer to swat a political rival.