On Saturday, residents of Delhi indulged themselves. They voted in the 70-seat Assembly elections. The embedded expectation is that winners will represent their cause. The aspiration is that those elected will deliver change. The voters hope that they can hold those they elect responsible.
Hope is frequently tinged with illusion. The voters of Delhi may well hold the government of Delhi accountable, but the fact is the government of Delhi has little authority to decide or deliver. The National Capital Territory of Delhi is defined as a Union Territory having legislative powers and is virtually a department of the central government.
The creation of the state of Delhi is an example of placebo politics.
Consider the corral within which aspirations and public expectations are contained. The two principal pillars of power in any government relate to right to legislate and administer land and the law and order of the land. The government of Delhi has the powers to govern and make laws except on public order, police and land. So the promise to make Delhi safe for women really depends on the Union home ministry. Any improvement of urban infrastructure mostly depends on the Union urban development ministry.
Theoretically, barring the reserved areas, the government of Delhi can legislate and administer all the subjects, including 60 entries in the state list and over 45 in the concurrent list of the Constitution. In practice, on over half the subjects, including municipal governance, it is the will of the Centre that prevails.
Indeed, Section 239 AA 3(c) of the Constitution states if any provision of law made by the legislative Assembly is repugnant to any provision of law made by Parliament, the law made by Parliament shall prevail. And nothing prevents Parliament from enacting a law amending/varying/repealing a law passed by the Delhi Assembly.
The provisions of the Government of National Capital Territory (GNCT) of Delhi Act, 1991 (http://tinyurl.com/nfuomjh; http://tinyurl.com/pn2j368) are most revealing. Section 22 states legislation on financial matters—taxes and expenditure—requires the okay of the Lieutenant Governor. Section 41(2) states the decision of the L-G is final, whether the matter calls for his discretion or not. And when decisions are taken, Section 52 reveals that the Delhi government is merely a proxy for the Centre—all contracts are an exercise of the executive power of the Union, and all suits/proceedings shall be instituted by or against the Government of India.
Most services that the Government of Delhi claims to provide is provided in major metros by the local municipal corporation. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation also
runs schools, the BEST transport service, distributes power, manages hospitals, provides water and sewerage services. Why should it be different for the city of Delhi?
The question that needs to be asked is: Does Delhi need to be a state at all?
The founding fathers had answered this poser. Originally, Delhi was designated as a Union Territory and the national capital was under a chief commissioner. The issue of peoples’ representation was addressed with seats in the Lok Sabha. The creation of the metropolitan council in the 1960s was to create a mechanism for response.
It is the dilution of the wisdom of the founding fathers in 1991 that has led to the chaos. The principal agents of change in Delhi are the DDA, MCD, NDMC, Cantonment Board and police. Each of them functions autonomously, and so to speak reports not to the Delhi government but to the Central government. The creation of the state of Delhi has only added a layer of inefficiency.
The votaries of statehood have often cited development as a dividend of the GNCT of Delhi Act. Political parties claim credit for reduction in pollution, flyovers, new roads and the metro. In reality, the pollution problem got resolved only after a series of public interest litigations in the Supreme Court. The expansion of roads and new flyovers are collateral benefits of India hosting major events like the Commonwealth Games. And the idea of Delhi Metro became a reality thanks to the push from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime.
You could argue that representation in the state Assembly has enabled citizens to raise issues. The harsh reality is this: In the decade till 2013, the Assembly of Delhi sat for an average of only 21 days a year when the norm for small states is 50 days a year.
The idea of statehood for Delhi militates against economic and strategic logic. The statehood of Delhi is financially unsustainable. The strategic imperative—the national capital cannot be a state within a state—is indisputable. National institutions need insulation from petty politics. Look at Washington DC. The capital of the United States was created in 1791 as a separate district under the exclusive control of the federal government. Surely, the wisdom of the oldest democracy has not created a deficit of democracy.
Why not dump the idea of Delhi as a state and revert to the idea of keeping the national capital as the national capital? shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com
Shankkar Aiyar is the author of Accidental India: A History of the Nation’s Passage through Crisis and Change