Withhold assent to Improvement Trust Bill, Cong urges Guv

The Congress urged Governor Gulab Chand Kataria to withhold assent to the Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025, and to reserve it for consideration of the President of India under Article 200 read with Article 201 of the Constitution.

The Vidhan Sabha on Monday passed the legislation that would enable the government to divert money and financial resources of the improvement trusts.

A delegation led by CLP leader Partap Singh Bajwa, Deputy Leader of Opposition Aruna Chaudhary, former Speaker of Vidhan Sabha Rana KP Singh and MLA Phillaur Vikramjit Chaudhary met the Governor recently.

They said the Punjab Town Improvement Act, 1922, created improvement trusts as area-specific, quasi-autonomous bodies to conceive, finance and execute improvement schemes—street layouts, slum clearance, housing, trunk infrastructure—within the municipal area concerned.

Bajwa said the new amendment introduced a Municipal Development Fund (MDF) and mandated that a portion of the money received from disposal of trust properties be transferred to it. This, he argued, changed the character of the trust funds from locally earmarked resources into fungible, state-level funds to be allocated at the Executive’s discretion. The Congress leader said this raised several constitutional and administrative infirmities.