Cabinet approves merger of Delhi’s three civic bodies, AAP hits back

While the BJP has been ruling the civic bodies for the last 15 years, it faces a tough challenge from the AAP this time. Two weeks ago, when the State Election Commissioner decided to defer the announcement, it drew a sharp reaction from the AAP which accused the Commissioner of succumbing to pressure from the BJP.

On Tuesday, senior AAP leader Atishi said the sweeping mandate that her party got in Punjab had scared the BJP, which is why it wants to postpone MCD elections.

“Unification of MCDs is an excuse. It has nothing to do with elections. The truth is that BJP is scared of Arvind Kejriwal and of AAP. BJP has been in power in the municipal corporations for 15 years now. The party has been in power at the Centre for 7 years. In all this time, they never did anything for unification. A day after the exit poll results, which showed that AAP was sweeping Punjab, they made the state election commission postpone the announcement of the MCD election date saying they want to unify the three bodies. Why did they do it now? Because they are scared of AAP and of Arvind Kejriwal. They know that the people of Delhi will reject their politics of corruption,” she said.

According to sources, BJP’s state unit wants the elections to be postponed by six months so that it can get the chance to work under a unified corporation and show people that things had changed after the Centre’s decision. The MCD was trifurcated in 2012 under the Congress government headed by Sheila Dikshit, with the stated aim of decentralisation of governance. Over the years, however, the division put financial strain on the North and East civic bodies and led to unequal division of resources between these and the cash-rich South MCD.

A BJP leader alleged: “All this while, the AAP government starved the corporations of money. We want to tell people that if we are treated fairly, things will be different and our employees will be paid on time. With the Centre’s intervention, things can look very different in MCD within a few months.”

On the need for unification, an official said: “The erstwhile Delhi Municipal Corporation was trifurcated into three Municipal Corporations. The trifurcation was uneven in terms of the territorial divisions and revenue-generating potential of each corporation. As a result, there was a huge gap in the resources available to the three corporations, vis-a-vis their obligations. The gap has widened over a period of time, increasing the financial difficulties of the three municipal corporations, leaving them incapacitated to make timely payment of salaries and retirement benefits to their employees and thereby creating serious impediments in maintaining civic services in Delhi.”

Some more amendments have also been cleared in the principal Act of 1957 to ensure a more robust delivery architecture for greater transparency, improved governance and efficient delivery of civic services for the people of Delhi, officials said.