Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Delhi government has celebrated its 100 days in office. A day before, the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) released a list of failures and unfulfilled promises of Chief Minister Rekha Gupta government. In the midst of all this probably what missed the headlines was a drunk 19-year-old brat mowing two people sleeping in their shanty.
This incident missed a mention in the internecine debate between the two parties as law and order is not part of the delegated power of governance to the Delhi government. But then that doesn’t remit the point that crime control, traffic management and maintaining law and order are integral to the governance of a city.
The onus is more on the Rekha Gupta government as she herself has considered her government be part of the four-engine machinery running the national Capital today, three others being the Municipal Corporations, the Central Ministries of Home and Urban Development and the Lieutenant Governor’s office. Meaning the same party rule in all the four offices.
The AAP leaders erred in attacking the Rekha Gupta government on the municipal and civic front, which includes education and water and power supply, as the efforts being made to revive the city administration on these fronts is more than visible. It’s not easy to clear an Augean Stable created thanks to 10-years-long period of lack of governance in the city.
Due to a complete disconnect and lack of cooperation between the Centre and the city government in the past 10 years, the national Capital has suffered most on the law and order and crime control fronts. A messy traffic management has become integral to the façade of the city, with several factors contributing to it.
A few weeks back in these very columns it was mentioned about a submission made by the Centre on the state of crime in the city. The centre had submitted that 95 organised gangs were active in Delhi.
This despite the fact that the overriding the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA), legislated to combat issues relating to organized crime and terrorism within the state, has also been under application Delhi since January 2002.
The lack of coordination between the two governments was such that a plan submitted by Delhi Police for streamlining traffic movement on several arterial roads remained pending for years. Some of these proposals have got cleared in the past 100 days and for once one can see sanity returning to East Delhi’s lifeline Vikas Marg.
The proposal which remained pending for almost six-years was to shut down all the traffic signals and the intersections and instead create U-turn passages.
Its implementation has now helped in keeping the traffic moving though in slow pace. Earlier it created intersection to intersection jams with traffic moving at snail’s pace.
Another initiative which the Home department of the Delhi government has reported to have started is the setting up of 840 Virtual Court (VC) systems for secure and timely court productions. Once operational, these VC systems will significantly reduce delays in prisoner transport, lower security risks, cut operational costs, and enable faster, technology-enabled judicial proceedings. This initiative was lying pending for all these years because there was no dialogue between the Centre and the city government.
Since a dialogue has been established and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the election campaigns had promised that he himself would be in charge of reviving governance in the city, the obligation is on the city government to make centre fulfil their tallest leader’s promise.
While under Rekha Gupta’s leadership, as mentioned earlier, civic governance is witnessing a revival but crime and law and order scene continues to be as abysmal as it was under the AAP government.
The Centre at its end would have to review its crime control policy for the national Capital.
While the state government under the present arrangement would follow its directions without any qualms but awell-articulated direction for controlling crime has to be the Centre’s initiative. The BJP government cannot afford that Delhi should continue to live with the sobriquet of the Crime Capital.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice