Swaraj Bill likely to be merged with 2 laws

Decision on combining bills taken at HoD meet

In an attempt to decentralise power and boost day-to-day decision-making by common people, the AAP government is reportedly in the process of brining in a legislation by clubbing together its proposed Swaraj Bill with the two drafts of the new municipal laws.

A highly-placed source said the Kejriwal government was seriously mull-ing the idea of merging its proposed Swaraj Bill, which it had promised to introduce in its manifesto, with the drafts of the two municipal bills, to ensure mohalla sabhas in each municipal ward were fully equipped to take financial decisions in their day-to-day functioning.

The government will be reportedly merging its Swaraj draft with the proposed Delhi Municipal Corporation Bill and the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Election of Councillors) Bill 2014. The Delhi Nagar Swaraj Bill that had forced AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal to quit office after his 49-day stint as the chief minister after he failed to get it tabled in the Assembly.

Delhi state election commissioner Rakesh Mehta, who has prepared the draft of the new municipal laws to replace the archaic Delhi Municipal Act of 1957, said there was provision of having ward committees in the Constitution. The officer said that he had recommended the same measures to strengthen the ward committees. “But we need to look into the Constitution whether there was any provision to have mohalla sabhas in the municipal wards.”

A senior bureaucrat said that the decision to incorporate the proposed drafts of the Swaraj bill with the two other municipal bills was reportedly taken by Mr Kejriwal during his weekly meeting with the HoDs, convened by his deputy Manish Sisodia. The implementation of the Swaraj Bill was the major thrust of the AAP in its campaign for the 2013 elections, in which it had won 28 of the 70 seats.

After assuming power in 2013, the Kejriwal government had made a serious pitch to introduce the bill in the Assembly, but lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung did not allow the bill to be tabled in the Assembly on the grounds that the state government had not got it cleared from the Centre. The L-G’s refusal to allow the tabling of the bill had eventually forced Mr Kejriwal to quit mid-way.

A document accessed by this newspaper revealed that the AAP government wants to merge the Swaraj Bill with two other municipal bills. “It has been proposed that Delhi Swaraj Bill may be merged with the Delhi Municipal Corp-oration Bill 2014, Delhi Municipal Corporation (Election of Councillors) Bill 2014 and a single bill instead of three bills may be drafted. The draft of Delhi Municipal Corpora-tion Act has already been submitted to the higher authorities.”