The three municipal corporations in the national capital have been busy over the past week, assessing strengths and resources, since the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill 2022 was passed in Parliament, paving the way for re-unification of North, South and East corporations.
Civic officials said the houses of the three corporations are likely to be dissolved around April 18-20 and a special officer will be appointed to run the unified MCD till elections are held. “Usually, the election of mayor is notified in the third week of April. But since it will not be the case anymore, the houses will have to be dissolved. A senior IAS officer (joint secretary level) will be appointed as special officer by the Union home ministry to run the civic body in the meantime,” said a senior official.
The long stock-taking exercise of getting the estimates of staff, posts, committees and heads of each of the departments across different categories has started in each of the three civic bodies. According to officials, with the merger of the three corporations, a large number of posts will have to be surrendered.
“It is going to take at least 10 more days to do the stock taking. Each corporation is compiling its own data, as of now. We are trying to find out how many relevant posts will remain on the basis of functionality. Each department has been asked to submit details of their projected staff strength for carrying out the respective functions. At present, there are three sets of departments for each of the corporations, three HODs, three deputies and their staff. All this will become one,” the official said.
Redistribution of manpower
Once the data is ready, the commissioners of the three civic bodies will constitute a committee for human resources planning for each of the departments. At present, the central establishment department, which is coordinating the work related to the merger, is holding meetings of various departments of the three civic bodies. “The next meeting will be held on Monday or Tuesday,” said another senior civic official.
The central establishment department has traditionally been the cadre controlling authority of all employees of Category A, B, C and D. “What is more complex and time consuming is human resource planning and re-appointment of employees in case the posts held by them are surrendered. Once this is in place, the committee will work on the financial integration, calculating the assets and liabilities of each corporation, which will be easier, as corporations have this data ready. At present, the three corporations together have liabilities of Rs 16,000 crore,” the second official said.
Paying dues priority
Asked about the first thing to be done post the merger, officials said, it will be ensuring payment of pending staff salaries and dues to the contractors. “This is where the trouble started, leading to a crisis. Our priority will be fixing this. Salaries of staff including teachers of the North and East corporations have been pending for a few months. Then there are dues pending of contractors for various projects,” the second official said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while introducing the reunification Bill in Parliament, had stated that the merger of staff is likely to save `150 crore each year. This is because the Category A posts, including commissioners and their deputies, are the highest-paid lot, which will be back to one instead of three each. Also, a lot of employees at present are working on deputation from different departments, which will not be the case anymore. Pre-trifurcation lists of employees based on seniority are being consulted to appoint heads of departments under the reunified body.
The erstwhile municipal corporation of Delhi was trifurcated in 2012 by the then Congress government led by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. In 2012, Congress was the ruling party at the Centre and in Delhi and got the amendment done in an attempt to make inroads into the civic bodies, which had become BJP bastions, as well as to dilute the powers of a single powerful mayor.
BJP has been ruling the corporations for 15 years and trying to retain control. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been running the Delhi government since 2015, with only a little representation from BJP in the Assembly.
What the new bill says
The 2022 amendment bill states that the trifurcation of the corporation was uneven in terms of 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 and thereby creating serious impediments in maintaining civic services in Delhi,” the bill document read.
The three corporations have been struggling with financial resources and also claiming that the AAP-led Delhi government has not been releasing funds “due” to the corporations, forcing civic staff including doctors to sit on strike multiple times over the past five years. Also, development projects have been stalled on account of lack of funds.
Officials said once the bill is enacted, the power centre of the corporation will change. “It will ne more or less be governed by the Centre on the lines of the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment Board, just like it used to be the case with the unified MCD before 2012. The mayor then directly reported to the home ministry. Trifurcation gave powers to an extent to the Delhi government to intervene in the matters of the corporations, which shall not be the case any longer,” said K S Mehra, former commissioner of the unified MCD.
The bill, however, doesn’t give any clarity on the funding pattern of the reunified MCD, but it can be assumed that like in the case of NDMC and Cantonment Board, the MCD too will receive financial aid directly from the Centre. At present, the Centre can give funds to corporations only under certain schemes such as Swachh Bharat.
Will it succeed?
Mehra said the primary idea of trifurcation, which was to decentralise administrative machinery, remains unachieved. There are still 12 zones across the corporations where civic services are not reaching the doorsteps. Hence, it is hoped that unification will benefit the civic body as well as the end user. “It will help pool all resources in one place. Places with lesser potential such as in East Delhi with a large number of slum clusters and North with a large number of unauthorised colonies can be helped by the funds saved. Also, it will bring uniformity in planning and implementation with uniform rates of parking and other facilities, which at present are of multiple sorts. The merger will definitely help simplify things for both the executive and the citizens,” said Mehra.
Delimitation exercise
Officials said the bill provides for capping the number of municipal wards up to 250, from the existing 272, which means a delimitation exercise has to be carried out, which is a long-drawn exercise and may take six months to a year.
“This will defer civic polls by at least six months to nearly a year,” said an official from the State Election Commission. The civic polls were due in April. However, on March 9, the SEC deferred the announcement of the poll schedule saying that it has received a representation from the Centre seeking to reunify the corporations. The BJP-led Centre said it wants to introduce reforms in the civic bodies, which at present are in a bad shape.
Y S Mann, former director of press and information of the unified MCD and later of the North Corporation, said trifurcation did not help the cause. “At present, Delhi has multiple civic limits with different rates for every facility from parking to sanitation. East and North have been left to fend for themselves. Being a UT, there should be one civic body handling all resources and planning so that there is no multiplicity. This can help make it a global city. The idea of decentralisation did not work because the trifurcation was done without any financial reasoning or putting it through a finance commission. In the end, services did not reach the doorsteps. Whatever political parties say, unification will help bring reforms in the civic body. However, it will require a huge financial aid from the Centre to bring the house in order,” said Mann.
Opposition sceptical
Senior Congress leaders, however, said that trifurcation was done to bring civic services a step closer to the citizens and alleged that it was due to corruption that it did not work. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP, told The Morning Standard that he stands by his speech against the bill in Parliament. He considers the move, “constitutionally suspect, legally untenable, administratively blunderous and politically hypocritical”.
“Firstly, this bill is only about giving more control to the Centre and has nothing to do with the plight of Delhi and its hapless citizens. This is dangerous politics the BJP is playing by delaying polls through delimitation, which is going to lead to disorder, disorganisation and disaster in the city,” he said.
He further said that till a year ago, the revenue gap of three municipal corporations was Rs 2,200 crore. “If improvement of the civic bodies was an object of the bill, it should have mentioned as to how the gap would be bridged. This is not an improvement bill and will be challenged. The Finance Commission had recommended devolution of `488 per person per year for every municipality in India and by that count, it comes to `4,087 crore for Delhi. This amount has not been given to Delhi so far even though other municipalities across the country have been getting this fund,” said Singhvi.
The AAP, which hopes to trump BJP in the civic polls, has been alleging widespread corruption in the civic bodies. AAP leaders said unification could have been done after the polls and questioned the timing of the move. Deputy CM Manish Sisodia had earlier said that BJP is “scared” of losing and hence used this tactic to suit its own political ambitions.
Durgesh Pathak, AAP’s municipal affairs in-charge, said, “Unification alone cannot ensure better services. It is a question of right intent. They can bend rules to favour their political ambitions, but not bend people’s thinking, who are with AAP. No matter when elections take place, people will make us win,” said Pathak.
Numbers that matter in Delhi
272 Municipal wards at present
Budget deficit of three corporations
Rs 13,000 cr North
Rs 800 cr east
Rs 500 cr south
Civic Centre, the tallest building in Delhi located at Minto Road, has so far been the headquarters of the North Corporation. It will be the seat of power of the reunified civic body. Until 2011, the unified civic body used to function from Town Hall in Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk.
According to the State Election Commission, tenure of the South, North and East Corporations is ending on May 18, May 19 and May 22, respectively
Following the bill to reunify the municipal bodies in the national capital, officials face a mammoth task of redistributing resources including manpower, considering that a large number of posts will have to be surrendered. Vatsala Shrangi gets deep into how they are going about it and explains what are the other challenges they are facing in order to make the merger move successful