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MAYOR SAAB

The job comes with limited powers, but is much coveted — the First Citizen tag is appealing, but the real benefits often fail the test of propriety
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A consistent demand is to entrust Mayors with more powers. Tribune Photo: Malkiat Singh
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First Citizen — it sounds stately, and comes with perks such as an official car with a driver, plush government accommodation and private staff to handle official work. The heady feeling gets a reality check soon enough, and given the limited powers at his disposal, Mayor Saab faces the test of propriety. More often than not, the failure rate remains high.

Since the December 21 Municipal Corporation elections in Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Phagwara and Patiala, there has been a mad race among the newly elected councillors to grab the mayoral posts. The former Mayors of these cities, however, maintain that it is actually a post “besieged with thorns”. A common refrain is that howsoever hard one may work to streamline the civic issues, the Mayor is continuously targeted, even by the councillors from one’s own party. “The level of expectations of the fellow councillors, party colleagues and city residents becomes so high that it remains unachievable. Even more difficult is to ward off the allegations of corruption, to which a Mayor is most vulnerable,” they add.

Most politicians spoken to go a step further, and describe it as being more of a “money-minting post than having anything to do with power games”. There is a price fixed for every legal or illegal work done through the civic body officials, they claim, and there’s a cut for every contract.

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“The Mayors in every subsequent government have become more corrupt to the extent that they have transformed the adage ‘money makes the mare go’, with mare being replaced by Mayor,” says a senior MC official posted in Amritsar.

“In practical terms, the Mayor has very limited powers,” says former Local Bodies Minister Manoranjan Kalia. “A Mayor can enjoy power only when he calls the Municipal Corporation House or convenes a meeting of the Finance and Contracts Committee as its de facto chairperson. Here, he can take certain decisions, finalise tenders and allot contracts. That is it. The rest is all a facade and for public consumption,” he adds.

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Rakesh Rathour, the BJP Mayor of Jalandhar from 2007-12, agrees. “Even though the Local Bodies Department is considered to be self-government, it is practically not so. Many of the resolutions, which would have been path-breaking measures that the MC House in Jalandhar got passed during my tenure, got shelved by the bureaucracy. One important resolution that I got passed was of linking house tax with PSPCL bills for better recovery. Our tax recovery was just 20 per cent then. But a Local Bodies official shelved it without giving any valid reason. It was then that I realised that a single official is more powerful that the whole MC House led by the Mayor and 59 other councillors who were then elected by the people,” he says.

Former Congress minister Brahm Mohindra, too, maintains that the bureaucracy is all-powerful even in the Local Bodies Department. “A Mayor is the First Citizen of the city. He holds a huge responsibility of ensuring cleanliness, optimum drinking water supply, maintaining roads, parks, streetlights and the sewage system. But he has to route everything through the Commissioner. The Mayor does not have any executive powers as these are all vested with the Commissioner as per the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976. When I was the Local Bodies Minister, I had studied in depth the pros and cons of the prevailing system. I was all for delegating more powers to the elected representatives and had even put forward a proposal for it. Somehow, nothing could happen,” he says.

The uneven balance of power between the bureaucracy and

the elected representatives remains a point of contention

Former Akali Mayor from Ludhiana HS Gohalwaria says, “Till my tenure, Mayors used to have one unique power. They could write the Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) of Commissioners. For the same reason, Commissioners would remain in the good books of the Mayor. It was during the last Congress regime that the Mayors got deprived of this power too.”

A Mayor gets to realise that the entire city has given him the responsibility for its development and that he has to deliver, says Gohalwaria. “He has to show his calibre, possess the right vision and know the right format for documentation of his plans. He has to ensure that while he does this, no one should be able to point any finger at him alleging corruption. But, in reality, this is not what everyone wants. The voters of his ward have a different level of expectation. They start coming to him seeking jobs, not realising that there is a proper system in place for this,” he adds.

Former Congress Mayor of Amritsar and now AAP spokesperson Karamjit Singh Rintu says the Mayor’s position should be made more powerful. “A Mayor has to face disappointment at every step. The government must seriously develop a mechanism by which the Mayors being people’s representatives become more enabled. This is the foundation-level of government and has a direct bearing on the functioning of the state government. I am aware that the AAP is already working in this direction. Another issue which needs to be checked is the interference of multiple agencies like the Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company (PMIDC).”

Sushil Sharma, former BJP councillor and Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Jalandhar MC, says, “Even though the Mayor is an elected representative, all his powers have been clipped. He is just like a rubber stamp. He cannot make any checks and balances when it comes to the staff by himself. In the last House, time and again we used to rake up the issue with the Mayor about disproportionately appointed safai karamcharis for different wards. Even though the then Mayor wanted to rationalise and improve the system, his hands were tied,” he points out.

Retired top bureaucrat and former Principal Secretary, Local Bodies, Suresh Kumar, however, opines that there is no inadequacy in the already laid out rules and procedures and that it is just that a better understanding is required to run the show. “Both the Mayor and the Commissioner need to respect the law. The Mayor needs to understand that it is the Commissioner who has the power to handle day-to-day administration, transfers, etc, and the Commissioner needs to respect the legislative decisions taken in the MC House. Both need to use their prudence and develop a common bond for the smooth handling of legal and administrative procedures. The Commissioner must understand that he should not cross the line. And if the Mayor has to take any decision, he can call a meeting of the House and get it passed as a resolution by the majority of councillors,” he points out.

It sounds simple, but isn’t. Mayor Saab knows it better than anyone else.

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