With the mayoral elections inching closer, the issue of the current ‘one-year term’ on rotational basis for the top civic posts has become a matter of debate for the outgoing Mayors and civic officials.
The three civic bodies — North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NMC), South Delhi Municipal Corporation and East Delhi Municipal Corporation will elect new Mayors for their respective areas in the last week of April, with the current year being for the reserved category. As the final day to file nominations for the three top posts is on Monday, sitting Mayors across the three bodies have begun to raise their voices demanding tenure more than ‘just one year’.
“The five-year tenure for the Mayor post sees five single-year terms on a rotation basis, with the first year being reserved for women, the second open category, third for reserved category, and the remaining two also being in open category,” said Yogendra Singh Mann, NMC Public Relations Officer.
“The current year being the third year is reserved for the SC category. While NMC will elect its Mayor on April 28, EDMC and SDMC on April 29,” Mann added. East Delhi Mayor Ram Narain Dubey believes that the term should be extended from one-year to at least 20 to 25 months’.
“One year is too little a term to understand and govern a civic area. By the time a Mayor understands the issues plaguing his or her area, he or she sets to leave the post for the next incumbent and the cycle goes on for five years,” said Dubey. North Delhi Mayor Azad Singh too agrees that one-year cycle term be expanded to at least ‘two-and-a-half years’.
“One year cycle term for five successive years in just not enough. Each corporation should have at least 2.5 years so that the civic leaders can understand and implement the issues properly,” Singh said. “For North Delhi, drinking water and dengue are some of the major issues and if after each year one changes the top leader than work system itself gets slowed down as the next Mayor has to do it all over again,” he added.
The mood in South Delhi is also quite the same and as the dates for the elections draw nearer, speculations are also running high, since no nominations have been filed yet for the three top posts, the last date for which is tomorrow. leader of Opposition in SDMC Farhad Suri said, “Instead of one-year term cycle for five years for various categories, we can have a continuous cycle of a five-year term for women, reserved category, besides general category.”