Now, admn secy’s office to grant approval to all municipal works in Punjab

The Punjab Government has withdrawn a nine-year-old order empowering the Local Bodies Department Directorate to approve resolutions of municipal works.

Now, resolutions passed by the state’s 166 urban local bodies will be approved by the office of the administrative secretary of the department.

The order was issued on the directions of Local Government Minister Ravjot Singh. No official reason was cited for it. The minister did not respond to repeated phone calls for a comment.

However, sources said there was more to this than meet the eye. They feared further delay in the approval process with the move due to the concentration of power in higher echelons of bureaucracy.

Manjeet Sethi, former deputy mayor of the Mohali Municipal Corporation cited similar concerns. “Shifting of the work to the office of the administrative secretary would further delay approvals,” he said.

Earlier, the department had decentralised the process, tasking the directorate, executive agency of a department, with granting approvals to the works.

However, the effective decentralisation of powers, as per the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, is yet to be achieved as the state government has overriding powers over the urban local bodies in matters like framing of rules and cancelling or suspending a resolution.

In 2022, the AAP government had entrusted the Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) and ADC (Urban Development) with acting as field officers to implement government policies, put up all resolutions of Class I MCs/Improvement Trusts to the Director, Local Government.

Sources said in light of the fresh orders, clarification was being sought on the powers of the ADCs now.