New Delhi: A day after the Delhi High Court slammed the AAP-Delhi government for failing to provide essentials, including notebooks, to students in MCD schools, L-G V K Saxena’s office accused Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj of “sitting on its proposal to temporarily enhance the MCD Commissioner’s “financial powers” and causing the issue, among other problems, in the civic body.
They claimed that Bharadwaj had been sitting on a file pertaining to a proposal to temporarily increase the Commissioner’s financial powers from Rs 5 crore to Rs 50 crore, which Saxena supported because the MCD’s executive body, the Standing Committee, had not been constituted for seven months.
Meanwhile, the AAP accused Saxena of “illegally appointing BJP officials” as ”aldermen”—nominated members of the civic bodyasas a result of which the Committee is yet to be created and blamed the “L-G’s political attitude for the reason behind the mess”. The Commissioner’s financial powers are limited to authorising contracts for up to Rs 5 crore.
Previously, tenders and contracts worth more than Rs 5 crore were approved by the MCD Committee, and the Commissioner issued tenders for the job. This clause was intended to guarantee that the Commissioner “did not enjoy unbridled power and remained accountable to the elected corporation.”.
“Upon being made aware that much of the work at MCD — including disposal of garbage at landfills and lack of budget for MCD schools and hospitals — due to the non-constitution of the Committee, Saxena, invoking Rule 19(5) of ToBR 1993, on March 6, 2024, recalled the file pertaining to delegation of increased financial powers to the Commissioner, pending with Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj since October 9, 2023,” according to officials of the L-G Secretariat.
However, the minister did not transmit the material within the three-day deadline and has yet to do so. When asked about this in the Delhi High Court yesterday (Friday), the Delhi government chose to mislead the court by claiming that the file had not been cleared because Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was in jail,” they said, adding that the file was still pending with Bharadwaj “and was never sent to the CM,” and that Bharadwaj had been sent three reminders to return the file, but he did not.
On this, the AAP stated that the MCD House had passed a resolution granting the Committee’s powers so that projects worth more than Rs 5 crore could be authorised while MCD work was not impeded. “Mr Lieutenant Governor, please tell us, why despite this proposal being passed in January, the MCD Commissioner has not placed a single proposal worth over Rs 5 crore before the MCD House to date?” said the All Progressives Party (AAP).
If the MCD Commissioner’s powers are enhanced beyond Rs 5 crore, the AAP claims, their responsibility to the elected House and MCD councillors “would completely end.”
