Private Bill won’t change Chandigarh governance without consensus: Jain

Satya Pal Jain, former two-time Chandigarh MP and serving Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India, today said while the governance structure of Chandigarh urgently needs “drastic changes”, local MP Manish Tewari’s Private Member Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on Friday is unlikely to yield any immediate outcomes unless all political stakeholders in the city first arrive at a consensus.

Reacting to Tewari’s move to amend the Punjab Municipal Corporation Law (Extension to Chandigarh) Act, 1994, the statute that governs the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, Jain said the proposal to give the city a directly elected Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor with a five-year tenure is “a good idea in principle” and would strengthen democratic accountability. But he underlined that Private Member’s Bills rarely become law.

“In the past 70 years, hardly any Private Member’s Bill has been passed in Lok Sabha. Parliament takes up these Bills only for three hours on Friday afternoons and which Bill is picked is decided by draw of lots. The chances of this Bill coming up for discussion in the next many years are very little,” he told The Tribune.

Tewari’s amendment Bill seeks to end the city’s unique system of electing the Mayor annually, which is in place since the MC’s inception in 1994, a model that has been repeatedly criticised for instability, short-termism and allegations of horse-trading.

The Bill proposes direct election to the top three civic posts by all electors in Chandigarh, a fixed five-year term co-terminus with the MC and sweeping governance changes shifting administrative authority from the UT Administrator to an elected Mayor-in-Council. It also includes an anti-defection provision for councillors, and vests the Mayor and deputies with powers to write the annual confidential reports of all UT officers except those in law and order.

Jain, an expert on constitutional and election law, said Chandigarh’s parent law, derived from the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976 but modified for the UT in 1994, was outdated and needed a comprehensive review before the next MC elections in December 2026. He supported key structural reforms — direct election of the Mayor to ensure authority and stability, greater financial and administrative powers, creation of a Mayor-in-Council or Metropolitan Council and applicability of the anti-defection law to councillors to prevent engineered majorities. “If any elected representative elected on a party ticket wants to switch sides, he should resign and seek a fresh mandate,” he said.

However, Jain emphasised that governance reforms cannot be piecemeal or unilateral. “Let there be consensus among different political parties and prominent citizens of Chandigarh on the proposed and other desired changes. Either the local MP or the UT Administrator should call a meeting of political and non-political stakeholders. Only after consensus should the matter be taken up with the Central Government — that alone can yield substantial results,” he said.

Recalling that he had facilitated the conduct of the first-ever MC elections in 1996 when Narendra Modi was in-charge of party affairs in Chandigarh, Jain noted that the UT was completing three decades under the current municipal framework next year. “Thirty years are going to lapse. The law needs drastic amendments so that the residents of Chandigarh can finally enjoy the real fruits of local self-government as visualised under Article 243 of the Constitution,” he said.

The debate triggered by Tewari’s Bill, even if unlikely to pass, has brought the long-pending question of Chandigarh’s governance model back to centre stage. At stake are the city’s administrative autonomy, stability of civic leadership, accountability of bureaucracy and the balance of power between an appointed Administrator and an elected local government — issues that will shape how Chandigarh is run in the years ahead.