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.
According to sources, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met senior Delhi BJP leaders over the move last week where he is understood to have indicated that the unification Bill could be tabled to coincide with the Delhi government’s five–day Budget session scheduled to commence on Wednesday.
Significant urban bodies such as the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and the Delhi Cantonment are already under the Centre, given the administrative framework of the city.
With a unified municipal corporation added to this list, the BJP, sources said, will now be able to pit itself directly against the AAP Delhi government in an attempt to erode its presence in Delhi in the run–up to the Assembly elections.
According to party sources, pending salaries will be paid, civic projects stuck in financial limbo will be completed and a parallel model of governance rife with achievements will be created by the BJP to compete with AAP’s ‘Delhi Model’ over the coming months.
Special emphasis, according to party sources, will be laid on sprucing up municipal dispensaries and schools so that these can be pitted directly against the AAP’s “claims related to the city’s health and education sectors”.
The unification of the MCD will also allow the BJP, which has been in power in the three MCDs for the last 15 years, an opportunity to “rid itself of over a decade of anti–incumbency” and the negative public perception of its average councillor underlined by allegations of graft.
