‘Hold Area Sabha meetings on public holidays’

To make area sabhas more participatory, Voice of People and other non-profits in Chennai want finer guidelines spelled out by the Chennai Corporation

Area Sabha is supposed to be conducted on four days in a year, and these days are clearly marked on the calendar. September 15 is one of those four days. A survey by Voice of People, a coalition of citizens, found that a little over one-third of the councillors conducted the Area Sabha on September 15.

Of the 88 councillors who participated in the survey, only 32 had conducted the Area Sabha on September 15. A total of 151 councillors were contacted for the survey conducted from September 19 to 22.

Reasons provided for giving the Area Sabha scheduled for September 15 a miss included not knowing about it; too short a notice to organise the event as the circular came late. According to the guidelines, citizens must be informed at least four days in advance. Only one-fourth of the organisers followed the guidelines as they were aware of the Government Order through a circular posted a week earlier in the WhatsApp group maintained by GCC for Councillors, says the report.

Half of them informed the citizens only the previous day and some on the day of the meeting. “Our interaction with most of the councillors who claimed to have conducted Area Sabhas revealed that they still do not have clarity about the difference between Area Sabha and Ward Committee. Most of them have held the meet with all the ten Area Sabha representatives and a few officials, calling it an Area Sabha,” said the report.

Voice of People has recommended that the four days currently marked to hold Area Sabhas in all the wards across Tamil Nadu are not public holidays. This makes it inconvenient for citizens. The Government should consider conducting the Area on the same four days as the Sabha Grama Sabha in Tamil Nadu (which are January 26; May 1; August 15; and October 2), the report says. The citizens group also wanted every Urban Local Government (ULG) to issue an advisory a week ahead of these mandated Area Sabhas days.

Charu Govindan, founder-member, Voice of People, says they want the Government to take the next step of spelling out the finer guidelines such as when citizens be informed, and who will cover the expenses of the meeting, and what should be the quorum and who will take the minutes for the meeting. She says, “All these must be in the public domain to make area sabhas participatory.”