President okays MCD 3-way split

Dikshit said her government will study the file in its final shape to factor in changes,if any,proposed by the President and then issue a government notification making the MCD split official.

The Home ministry had last month approved the split in-principle after Dikshit’s government pushed hard since June this year for dividing the monolithic MCD,insisting it is the only way to make it efficient.

The MCD services nine in every 10 of Delhi’s nearly 20 million residents,covering nearly 94 per cent of the city’s area — a job the Dikshit government says is humongous and often leads to inefficiency.

The proposal,in the form of a Bill,was cleared in the Delhi Assembly this month despite protests by several Opposition legislators.

Dikshit on Sunday said the formal notification,which her government hopes to issue once the file with the President’s assent is received on Monday,will seal the deal.

“That will be the final procedural requirement before we start making changes on the ground. A government committee is already preparing a set of rules to enforce the new law,” Dikshit said.

A committee headed by former bureaucrat K Dharmarajan is working on a new set of rules that will replace the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act,1957,and lay the broad parameters for the functioning of the three new municipalities.

The MCD will be split into the North and South Delhi municipal corporations,with 104 municipal wards each,and the East Delhi corporation that will have 64 wards.

Each municipality will have a separate mayor and deputy mayor and half of its seats will be reserved for women,up from the existing 33 per cent reservation.

Each municipality will have a commissioner. A new nodal agency called the Directorate of Local Bodies will also be created to coordinate among the three agencies.