Bill to merge 3 Delhi municipal corporations gets Cabinet nod
A bill to merge the three municipal corporations into one in Delhi was approved by the Union Cabinet on Tuesday.
Following which the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill is to be introduced in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament, sources in the government said.
It was on 2011, when the erstwhile Delhi Municipal Corporation was trifurcated into three municipal corporations – South Delhi Municipal Corporation
(SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) during the Sheila Dikshit rule.
The merger move has led to the postponement of announcement of MCD elections with all three parties the ruling BJP, AAP and the Congress launching their poll campaigns. In Okhla many ticket seekers and sitting representatives had switched themselves into poll campaign with some spending huge amount of money in posters, hoardings and biryani feasts.
After the State Election Commission had deferred the announcement of the election schedule for the civic bodies, which it was earlier slated to announce on March 9, war words started between the BJP and AAP.
The last civic polls for 272 wards were held in April 2017.
Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta welcomed the Centre’s move.
“The AAP is opposing the move because it will strengthen the corporation. In the last seven years, they worked to weaken the civic bodies. We are not doing politics on it. The Modi government always works for the betterment of the people,” he told reporters.
Its leaders said reunification of Delhi civic bodies will help BJP attempt image makeover.
On the other hand the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) attack the BJP over the move.
AAP’s Kalkaji MLA Atishi said: “The BJP is in power for the last 15 years in MCDs, and for seven years at the Centre, why did they think of unification (of MCDs) only after the exit poll results for the Punjab assembly elections were released?”
“The BJP could only think about the unification only when the term of the three MCDs was coming to an end. The BJP has seen the tenures of both the unified MCD and its trifurcated divisions. Today, it has been over seven years since BJP came to power in the Centre, yet it was so blindsided by its wicked intentions that it never expressed a desire to unify the corporation. They (BJP) realised they stood no chance in front of the AAP’s wave,” she said.
