The Hindu        02.12.2011

MCD trifurcation Bill passed

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

Paves the way for 50 per cent quota for women in civic body

The Delhi Assembly on Thursday passed by voice vote the
Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill-2011 which seeks to
trifurcate the civic body and reserve 50 per cent of the wards for women
amid protests by BJP members who trooped into the well and demanded
that the Government go for “full Statehood” instead. The Bill was
introduced in the House on Wednesday by Delhi Urban Development Minister
Raj Kumar Chauhan.

The House approved the Bill after
a daylong debate which was initiated by the Leader of Opposition, V. K.
Malhotra, who said ever since Delhi was made a C-class State in the
1950s “various experiments were made to restructure its administration”.
He said while the Assembly was constituted in 1993, still the Centre
never gave full State rights to Delhi.

Even now, when
the issue of MCD trifurcation was being pushed, he said, there was no
clarity on the model that it would follow – as in the case of Tokyo or
London. Also, the BJP leader wondered why was Chief Minister Sheila
Dikshit, who had led a delegation of Congress MLAs from the Delhi
Secretariat to Parliament in 2004 to press for full Statehood, now not
making the demand.

“Why snatch rights of the
Corporation alone? There are 18 items under the Constitution which
former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had brought under the corporations,
but in Delhi these powers have gradually been snatched from it,” he
charged.

Prof. Malhotra said if population alone was
the criteria for the division then would the Corporation not have been
divided otherwise. London, he said, has many more corporations despite
having a population of just about 65 lakh.

Similarly,
Prof. Malhotra argued that if corruption in MCD was being termed the
reason for its division then the Central Government and the Delhi
Government should be divided first as there are many more enquiries
pending against their functionaries.

Prof. Malhotra
said when Mr. Chauhan had claimed that it would take about a year to
implement the amendments fully, then what was the hurry to get it
passed. “In principle, we are in favour of division of the MCD and have
spoke about it. But we wants more powers to Delhi through full
Statehood,” he said, adding that the intentions and purpose of the
Government in bringing the Bill were wrong.

Later,
while replying to the debate, in which about 20 other members also
spoke, Ms. Dikshit said the MCD, which is controlling 97 per cent of
Delhi’s area and about 1.7 crore population, had become too large to
manage properly. “Eight times various panels have suggested that it be
broken into smaller parts.”

Ms. Dikshit said: “For
the past then years we have been trying to work out a solution and
everything has been discussed threadbare. The Government of India
thought it would be most viable if we had three corporations in Delhi.”

Declaring
that she and her Government were willing to pursue the issue of Delhi’s
interest with the Centre nth number of times, Ms. Dikshit said: “Our
purpose was to take into account the 74
{+t}
{+h} amendment which seeks to bring power closer to people and makes the
administration more efficient.”

“We did not try to
take the powers of either the MCD, NDMC or Delhi Cantonment Board. Our
intentions were clean and clear,” she asserted, adding that it was
during former BJP Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma’s tenure that fire
and water were taken from the MCD and placed under the Delhi Government.

Ms.
Dikshit said in fact the Delhi Government did not want to divide the
MCD earlier as the BJP was in rule there. “I want to make a political
statement that we were sensitive to this issue and wanted to only divide
it when the elections were due,” she said, adding that she waited
despite being asked by the Union Home Ministry and her party high
command to act in the matter. “I told them that we would be accused of
political bias,” she said.

With 50 per cent
reservation for women, Ms. Dikshit said Delhi has now become the first
metropolitan city to give this level of representation to women in the
civic body.

The Chief Minister said it would be by
March-April 2012 that the expert administrative committee under former
IAS officer K. Dharamarajan would finalised its recommendation on the
new set-up of the corporations and by then the elections to the civic
body would have taken place. “Please don’t expect trifurcation to be a
magic wand. It may take six months to a year for things to get
streamlined,” she said.