MCD Set To Elect Its Mayor But Delhi Might Remain At The Mercy Of 'Functioning' Standing Committee

It seems that the residents of Delhi under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) are destined to suffer in the political power struggle. The Mayor of Delhi will be elected on Friday, but will the standing committee with real powers to decide on changes hit a roadblock?

Despite electing Aam Admi Party (AAP) to MCD, the battle to take and execute decisions for a better Delhi will continue with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), not as an Opposition but as an operational partner.

The office of the Delhi Mayor can be an effective or ineffective institution, and the people of Delhi will feel its impact. Practically, the Mayor of Delhi has no powers, but then the political party they belong to harvests the status, unlike in other capitals and major cities of the world.

Rudolf Giuliani, the Mayor of New York, is credited with rebuilding the city post-9/11 attacks. With his zero-tolerance policy, US lawmakers vouched to bring street crime under control. Such examples galore with names like Dora Bakoyannis, Mayor of Athens; Lee Myung-bak, Mayor of Seoul; Keshab Sthapit, Mayor of Kathmandu; Sadiq Khan, London's mayor, and their achievements are history if one were to research this subject. 

All these individuals worked around the limited power the city's constitution provided. The bottom line is that the individual's personality and ability to push things to improve the city will determine the legacy they leave behind.

But MCD’s biggest challenge is to get budget and administrative decisions approved. 

The 'functional' power to operate the various local bodies is with a 'Standing Committee'. It has 18 members and a Chairperson who wield the actual decision-making powers. The Delhi Assembly elects six members and the rest 12 are councillors elected from the dozen zones of MCD, thus totalling 18 members in the Standing Committee. 

The Lieutenant Governor of Delhi can nominate 10 councillors termed 'aldermen' to various zones. They are to be selected based on their expertise in resolving various problems confronting the city, like garbage, sanitation, tree prunning, beautification etc.

Delhi's LG VK Saxena has exercised his powers to nominate the 10 councillors. AAP has accused the LG of appointing 10 BJP sympathisers and people with no expertise in MCD. 

But, the real worry for AAP is that the maths gets interesting. The 10 nominated councillors have the voting power to elect the councillors. 

According to MCD experts, this nomination of 10 members allows BJP to play around with numbers in three zones — Narela, Central and Civil Lines. They can help send six members to the Standing Committee. 

Technically, AAP currently controls eight zones (Narela, Civil Lines, Central, City SP, Karol Bagh, Rohini, West and South) based on the strength of its councillors who won in the latest MCD elections. On the other hand, BJP controls four zones of Shadra North and South, Keshavpuram, and Najafgarh.

The worry for AAP is in three zones of Narela, Civil Lines, and Central, where it’s ahead of BJP by around three-four councillors. The nominations can help increase the BJP councillors’ strength in these zones. 

For example, in the Civil Lines zone, AAP has nine councillors, and BJP has six; with four nominated members, the equation will change to 10 of BJP and nine of AAP. 

Similarly, in Central Zone, the equation can change from AAP’s 13 and BJP’s 10 to AAP’s 13 and BJP’s 12. Narela could change from AAP’s 10 and BJP’s 6 to 10 each with the help of four nominated members.

Assuming BJP gets a hold of Narela and Civil Lines Zone, AAP currently controls eight zones, and BJP four zones. Then each will control six zones each.

The election of rest six members to the standing committee by the Delhi Assembly is also a mathematical jugglery. AAP is aware of this delicate balance.

The AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal was perhaps aware of this complexity in the working of MCD. Hence, immediately after the MCD results, he had urged BJP, Congress, Independents, and all other political parties that had won a councillor's seat to work together.

Kejriwal and his team of MLAs and Councillors have made their intentions clear to clean Delhi of garbage, make it beautiful and action civic amenities and improve horticulture. BJP and its team that lost elections can prove they are willing partners in this endeavour while acting as a healthy and critical opposition.

However, will BJP rise above the political differences to work for the larger good of the people of Delhi? If they don't, in this struggle to control the Standing committee and the Chairman's post, people's basic issues are bound to get neglected as collateral. 

Democracy has its limitations. As Aristotle says, “Law, constitution, state, form of government all tend to coalesce since, from a moral point of view, they are all equally relative to the purpose which causes the association to exist.”

It is the conventions that make democracy vibrant and functional. LG could have followed the convention of discussing with the state government before nominating the 10 councillors. At least that would have ensured Delhi MCD would not face the risk of a stalemate in decision-making. The ultimate beneficiary, no one can dispute, should be the citizen of a democracy.