The AAP led Delhi Government and particularly Minister (Urban Development) SaurabhBhardwaj have been sitting for more than seven months over the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)proposal to temporarily enhance financial powers of MCD Commissioner. The proposed hike is from Rs five crore to Rs 50 crores.

Stating this here on Saturday, officials in Lt Governor(LG)V K Saxena’s secretariat also said citizens of Delhi are suffering due to this delay.  Moreover, the courts have been forced to take up issues of Education, Health and Garbage Disposal in the City.

Giving details, they said Saxena took cognizance of the issue that non-constitution of Standing Committee of the MCD did not allow the MCD commissioner to release funds.

Upon being made aware that much of work at MCD, including the disposal of garbage, at landfill sites, and lack of budget for MCD schools and hospitals, due to the non-constitution of the Committee, the LG invoked Rule 19(5) of ToBR 1993on March six and recalled the file pertaining to delegation of increased financial powers to the Commissioner, pending with Minister (UD) SaurabhBhardwaj since October last year.

However, the Minister instead of sending the file within three days as stipulated by Rule 19(5), irrespective of the hardships being faced by the people of Delhi due to inaction by MCD, chose to sit over the file and continues to do so.

However, upon being asked about the same in the Delhi High Court on Friday, the GNCTD deviously chose to mislead the Court by saying that the file had not been cleared due to Chief Minister being in jail. But the fact remains that the file is still pending with SaurabhBhardwaj since 09.10.2023, and was never sent to the Chief Minister, who was taken into custody only on 21.03.2024, they said.

Despite three reminders being sent to him on 15.03.2024, 28.3.2024 and 02.04.2024, Bhardwaj did not send the file to the LG through the Chief Minister, as the case should have been.Section 202 (C) of DMC Act defines the financial powers of the Commissioner MCD.At present, with the approval of GNCTD& Hon’ble LG, MCD Commissioner has been vested with financial power of Rs 5 crore only. All projects above Rs five crores are essentially to be cleared by Standing Committee.

As Standing Committee is not in existence for the last one and half year, various important projects related to health, sanitation and education are held up, resulting into depriving the benefits of the scheme to school children and public in general.

To deal with this exigency, MCD on 18.09.2023, put up a proposal to UD Department, GNCTD for enhancing powers of MCD Commissioner from Rs. Five crores to Rs. 50 crore on lines of powers of Principal Secretary of GNCTD. This was proposed to be done only till such time that the Standing Committee is constituted, as a temporary measure. This proposal is pending with GNCTD – Minister (UD) for consideration for more than last 6 months.

It will not be out of place to mention here that MCD in present scenario is not able to discharge important civic functions, like distribution of note books, procurement of desks for primary school children, supply of health equipment and medicine for hospitals and health centres.

In addition to these, MCD is finding difficulty in finalising/engaging concessionaire for South, West and Central Zones to deal with day to day collection of municipal solid waste and its transportation to processing facilities.

The work of rate/agency contract for setting up processing facility at Narela- Bawana is also held up due to project costs being more than Rs. 5 cr. The work of bio-mining which has to be completed in time bound manner as per NGT directions have also been affected severely due to non-finalisation of agency for completing the balance work.