Delhi municipal corporation bill gets Cabinet’s nod

‘Move will translate into presence of two parallel governments with more less equal powers’

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared a bill that proposes to unify the three municipal corporations in Delhi. The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022 is expected to be tabled in Parliament this week.

The amendment proposes a unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi by subsuming the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). The corporation was trifurcated in 2011.

“The division of the corporation was uneven in terms of the territorial divisions and revenue generation. As a result, there is a huge gap in the resources available to the three corporations, vis–a–vis their obligation,” a government source said.

The source said the gap has widened over time, increasing the financial difficulties of the municipal corporations. “The corporations are not able to make timely payment of salaries and retirement benefits to their employees and thereby creating serious impediments in maintaining civic services,” the source said.

The possibility of unification, sources said, had first been suggested to the BJP’s national leadership back in 2018. Last week, the civic bodies had sent a list of their finances over the last five financial years to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which is expected to disburse funds to the soon–to–be created unified body to bail it out.

Four years later, the move will, administratively, practically translate into the presence of two parallel governments with more or less equal powers — the Delhi government run by the Aam Aadmi Party and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi under the Union government. Delhi is a Union Territory with legislature.

At the core of the reunification of the Capitals’ three civic bodies, sources in the BJP told The Hindu, is the creation of a “parallel and more efficient Delhi Model” to be built from the ground up by bureaucrats handpicked by the Centre in time for the Delhi Assembly elections in 2025.