Supreme Court of India has hit the right shot The brazen and legally untenable claim of allowing nominated members of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to vote in the election of its Mayor. Despite legislation limiting the process to elected councillors, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to tweak the rules to allow 10 aldermen nominated by the lieutenant-governor to vote in the election. A question related to the mayoral election should attract national attention because of the political bitterness between the ruling BJP at the Center and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which runs the elected government in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The BJP has sought to interpret the relevant provisions in the Constitution and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi Act in such a way that the specific bar on voting of nominated members at “meetings” of the corporation should not be applied to its first meeting, in which the mayor and deputy are elected. The mayor is elected. It takes a particularly warped political imagination to argue that “meetings” do not include “first meeting”. Three attempts to hold the mayoral election after the MCD polls in December 2022 were stalled by clashes between AAP and BJP corporators over the question. Verifies the status of the decision AAP, which has 134 corporators in the 250-member councilAgainst BJP’s 104.
It is unfortunate that before the Court, the Lieutenant Governor also took a questionable political stand regarding the restriction on the right to vote in the proviso to Article 243R(2) and Section 3(3)(b)(i) of the Constitution. The Act was limited to regular meetings and not the first meeting of the council. The Court rejected this argument, noting that the law provides for the nomination of 10 people “having special knowledge and experience in municipal administration”, but without any voting rights. Keeping in mind the order of the court, Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has now Approved the date of February 22 for the election Mayor, Deputy Mayor and six members of the Standing Committee. Last year, Parliament passed a law to merge three corporations in Delhi into one entity, criticized for reversing the trend of compact local bodies for better delivery of civic services. Delhi’s lack of statehood is a source of conflict between the elected government at the center and the capital region, but political opponents should not let this tussle affect Delhi’s administrative structure. The key message from a 2018 constitution bench judgement, that elected bodies should not be undermined by unelected administrators, has yet to drive home.
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