Cabinet approves MiC scrapping

MUMBAI, April 8: In a major policy decision, the state cabinet today decided to scrap the Mayor-in-Council MiC system in both Mumbai an...

MUMBAI, April 8: In a major policy decision, the state cabinet today decided to scrap the Mayor-in-Council MiC system in both Mumbai and Nagpur municipal corporations from May 1. Simultaneously, it also decided to amend the relevant Acts to provide more powers to the mayor, the very reason why MiC was introduced in the first place.

8220;The cabinet unanimously approved the proposal moved by the Urban Development Department headed by Chief Minister Narayan Rane. The cabinet also empowered the chief minister to have informal discussions with the opposition leaders on the proposal,8221; said a senior minister who attended the Cabinet meeting that ended late in the evening. He added that the bill to amend the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Act as well as the Nagpur Municipal Corporation Act to provide for the scrapping would be introduced in the on-going budget session of the state legislature. 8220;When the MiC was introduced in April last year it was made clear that it was an experiment. Since the generalfeeling is that the MiC has failed in its objectives, there is no option but to scrap it,8221; the minister added.

On Wednesday the Shiv Sena Legislature Party SSLP had made a written submission to Chief Minister Narayan Rane demanding immediate scrapping of the mayor-in-council system in the BMC. The move did not raise many eye-brows because though the MiC was a Sena baby, Rane soon after taking over as the chief minister had made it clear that he was not too happy with the way it had shaped up.

In fact, following a series of complaints from corporators, the chief minister had asked Municipal Commissioner Girish Gokhale and Urban Development Secretary K Nalinakshan to submit report of MiC8217;s performance.

Both, Gokhale and Nalinakshan had submitted to Rane that the basic purpose for which the MiC was introduced, had been defeated because there was no transparency in MiC8217;s functioning.

The scrapping comes as a blow to Former Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, whose brain-child the MiC system was. Joshi8217;s maincontention was that even though the Mayor was a democratically elected principal office-bearer of the municipal corporation, legally municipal commissioner enjoyed more quasi-judicial as well as financial powers.

When Joshi himself was the Mayor of Mumbai, he had a series of clashes with the then commissioner, B G Deshmukh, over the powers of the mayor. And that8217;s when the germ of MiC was born. True to his desire, when Joshi became the C M, the first decision he took was to introduce MiC system in Mumbai and Nagpur. Following Rane8217;s decision, Joshi8217;s dream has now been shattered.