Municipalities in Punjab

AT a time when the Secretary of State and the Viceroy have laid down the principle in their joint Report that “there should be, as far as possible, complete popular control in local bodies and the largest possible independence for them of outside control,” and when the Secretary of State himself has, in a speech in the House of Commons, removed even the indefinite words “as far as possible” which in the past have done harm in similar cases, it is melancholy to reflect upon the pace at which we, in this Province, have been advancing. In thirty Municipal Committees, out of a total of a hundred, the elective system is non-existent, and only in eight out of the thirty has the decision been arrived at to introduce or re-introduce election from this year.