On June 16, Telangana Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao launched the ward administration system for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), ostensibly to improve local governance and ensure better coordination among various departments in civic matters.
The system entails the establishment of GHMC offices at the ward level, so that people can approach ward offices instead of zonal offices for the reddressal of grievances. Each ward office, headed by an officer of the rank of assistant municipal commissioner, will have employees from various wings of the GHMC.
Mr. Ramo Rao justified the system in view of the population explosion in the city. Each ward has a population that is equal to that of a municipality outside the GHMC, but lacks in administrative systems that municipalities are endowed with, he said.
The GHMC area is divided into six zones and 30 circles geographically, for administrative convenience. The number of circles was increased following the recommendations of the Prasad Rao Committee, constituted in 2011, for rationalisation of staff. Based on the Committee’s recommendations, the government of undivided Andhra Pradesh also issued orders in 2013, sanctioning 2,607 additional posts under various departments. But in less than a year, before the posts could be filled up, the State was divided, and Telangana was formed. Nearly a decade has passed since the formation of the new State, but the sanctioned posts for the GHMC are yet to be filled up. Every department is severely short-staffed. For instance, for the estimated population of one crore, there are only 18,000 sanitation workers employed.
In 2018, the GHMC’s Standing Committee unanimously approved a proposal to increase the number of zones to 10 and circles to 50 for quick, efficient and transparent delivery of services. It forwarded the proposal to the government. The change would mean 1,610 additional posts, apart from the earlier 2,607 posts which remained unfilled. The State government accorded in-principle approval for increasing the number of zones to 12 and circles to 48, but kept mum about the sanction of funds for this. The proposal has not taken any concrete shape, however.
The present council of the GHMC was formed in 2021, after elections were conducted in 2020. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi tasted its first major electoral setback during these elections. Almost a third of the members elected were from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was unprecedented. On formation of the council, the GHMC was constitutionally obligated to form ward committees. Two and a half years since the present council was formed, the ward committees have still not been formed.
The ward committees were to have local residents and NGOs, senior citizens, representatives of the underprivileged sections, women, persons with disabilities, slum residents, and other groups as members. Ward committee meetings were to be attended by all line department officers, and issues pertaining to the division were to be flagged. Recommendations from the committees were to go to the council and be discussed at the general body meeting for resolution, which reflects local self-governance.
At a recent press conference after the launch of the ward offices, Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav said that the government was wondering whether to scrap or retain the ward committees provision in the GHMC Act. Though he may have said this without thinking of the constitutional status of ward committees, his statement reflects the extent of the State government’s interference in the conduct of the GHMC’s affairs.
There was a time when coordination among all the line departments was achieved through city coordination meetings held every month. No such meetings are organised now. Weekly/fortnightly grievance redressal forums such as ‘Prajavani’ and ‘Face to Face’, which provided a platform for citizens to directly air their grievances to the Mayor or Commissioner of the GHMC, are a thing of the past. Twitter has replaced all these forums.
Even the announcement of the ward offices came without approval from the GHMC council. Under such circumstances, lofty claims about local governance and coordination through ward offices can be seen only as another election stunt, and not as a well-intentioned policy decision.
