Civic governance takes a hit as MCD struggles to find feet

More than six months after elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the civic body continues to remain plagued with policy paralysis that is holding up new projects and impacting the lives of residents.

- Paras Singh

NEW DELHI: From the operation of a new park for dogs and a new museum in Shahjahanabad, from the clearance of layout plans for major infrastructure projects to clearing procurement of insecticides and hiring agencies for upkeep of toilet complexes, scores of proposals are pending across all departments, according to officials aware of the matter.

Over this period, mayor Shelly Oberoi has been elected twice — on February 22 and April 26 and several violence-hit meetings of the house of councillors have been held. But the inability to get a standing committee and other panels in place over a bitter political tussle between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won the civic polls, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which finished second, has kept crucial work on hold.

A senior municipal official, who asked not to be named, said that more than 70 key policy proposals have been sent by the executive wing to the municipal secretariat addressed to the standing committee. Since the panel is still not in place, all of them will remain stuck. “The last set of proposals were cleared by special officer (SO) Ashwini Kumar in January and there is a massive backlog in terms of policy formulation. Since the new councillors had already been elected, SO was only taking calls on absolutely crucial matters like the schedule of taxes, which was cleared on February 15,” the official said.