The State Government’s prejudice, unsupportive and dominating attitude towards the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) is responsible for its slow pace of growth.
Unfortunately, even 13 years after formation of Uttarakhand, the State Government has not introduced any Act for MCD.
Till date no amendment has also been done in its old policies, maintained Mayor of Dehradun, Vinod Chamoli while highlighting the progress report of MCD on its foundation day on Monday.
"Although, MCD is considered the first municipal corporation of Uttarakhand and 12th in undivided Uttar Pradesh, it is still following the official structure prevalent in the 1950s and no amendments have been done in it yet," lamented the Mayor.
Blaming the State Government for its partial attitude towards the urban local bodies especially MCD, Chamoli said that State Government instead of providing support to the corporation is consistently withdrawing its major rights.
"Although MCD is an autonomous body but its power is still very limited and is regularly cut down by the state government, which is affecting its freedom and development both," he said.
later, criticising the State Government’s attitude, Chamoli said that the State Government just wants to dominate the local bodies, which is affecting the functioning of the corporation. He added that even the officials here at the corporation don’t take the instructions of the public representatives in MCD seriously as they get back up from the Government.
He further said that State Government is mentally not prepared to decentralise the power of the MCD and wants to keep the control of corporation in its hand. Discussing the cause of economic crisis in the MCD, Chamoli said that MCD is not getting any financial back up from the State Government.
Instead of providing financial assistance, State Government has withdrawn most of the additional revenue sources of MCD. Currently, MCD is not getting any direct financial assistance from the State Government. He further said that Government is not interested in implementing the 74th amendment.
Talking about some other shortcomings of MCD, he said that the responsibilities of MCD are increasing gradually but the staff is not increasing correspondingly.
Earlier in the initial stage, MCD used to have around 650 staff members but now the number of staff has reduced to 300. No new recruitments have been done, he added.