Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel on Friday took exception to the passage of a Bill in Parliament to reunify three Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) into one. “It was against the spirit of Constitution and federal structure for Parliament to interfere in the subject of local bodies,” he said.
Addressing a Press conference here, Goel said, “The Centre should have not proposed the unification Bill at the time when the State Election Commission was going to announce the poll schedule.”
“The trifurcation of the civic body was done during the former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit regime, and it was done through a democratic process. The Malhotra Committee had recommended splitting it into five corporations. In the Delhi Assembly, the Amendment Bill was brought, and it was divided into three civic bodies,” he said.
“As a Speaker, I have my protocol, but it seems this move of reunification has been done only to delay the municipal polls,” Goel said. Without naming anyone, the Speaker said for the past 11 years they enjoyed the trifurcation of the civic bodies. Now, when the elections were about to happen, they feared defeat and found a way to escape, he said.
“In the history of politics, those parties who tried to delay the elections got wiped out at the time whenever polls took place in the State or Centre,” Goel added.The Speaker also criticised the DDA, the Delhi Police and the Service Department for their failure to reply to the Assembly queries.
Goel said they will approach the court to ensure these deparments are answerable to the State Government.