MCD brass mull legal assessment of split

NEW DELHI: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is in a state of turmoil. A day after the Delhi cabinet finalized the decision to spilt the civic agency three-ways, MCD's political brass explored the possibility of taking legal recourse to assess the viability of the trifurcation. Mayor Rajini Abbi said that they would seek the legal opinion of experts and the chief law officer in MCD to see if such a split is 'legal' and in case it is not, they may go to court on this matter.
"We are seeking legal opinion on the matter.Then we will think about whether we can move court against the proposal to split MCD," said Abbi. The mayor has already requested Union home minister P Chidambaram to seriously view the whole issue and give proper time for a patient hearing to MCD before reaching a decision.
Amidst this confusion, there was also talk of how MCD would have more than one engineer-in-chief instead of the present one and the post of additional commissioners might be done away with since most of them are on deputation from other government agencies.
Meanwhile, the mayor claimed that the proposed structure would lead to a stronger executive wing than the deliberative wing and all the powers will be taken away from the elected representatives and given to bureaucrats.
Terming this split a political move, leader of the House Subhash Arya claimed that the trifurcation would not work out in favour of the people. "The bureaucrats will no longer be directly answerable to us. For instance, there will be three commissioners now who will be directly answerable to the state government. What we understand is that many of the decisions which were taken at the level of the mayor and standing committee chairman will be taken by the 'chief commissioner' who will coordinate the workings of the three corporations. The financial powers of the political brass will also reduce substantially," said Arya.
According to officials, such a split is surely likely to lead to more confusion as each corporation is going to try to shift the blame for any shortcomings on each other. "This is going to lead to more multiplicity of agencies which is already causing so many problems now. In case there are complaints of bad roads for instance, each corporation will blame the other,'' said an official. Many of the officials are already rooting for the corporation they want to be transferred to, with many opting for south.
Meanwhile, Abbi also maintained that the split will pose an extra financial burden of Rs 2,000 crore per annum due to the need for additional infrastructure and new posts. "It is not only about creation of additional posts. MCD is anyway facing shortage of technical staff like engineers, etc. and has not been able to find qualified people for years. How will the three corporations function properly in such a scenario? How will they meet the financial requirement for creation of more posts? I feel that public opinion should be sought on this matter," said works committee chairman Jagdish Mamgain.
With a projected income of Rs 7,000 crore, around 20% of this amount is given to MCD by the state government. The government is likely to have more say in the expenditure of these funds, claim officials. "How the government is going to distribute these funds is another issue altogether as each corporation will generate different amounts of revenue. The division of assets will also create problems," said a source.
As far as the use of the civic centrer is concerned, people feel that the centrer may be divided between three corporations or Town Hall and Kashmere Gate offices might be divided among the corporations with one functioning out of civic centre.
Many of the BJP councillors are threatening that they will not contest MCD elections if the split takes place while most of the Congress councillors had also opposed the plan and differences had emerged within the Delhi unit of Congress on the issue. The issue of increasing the number of women councillors has also not gone down well in MCD.