Decoding the Delhi Mayoral Polls Saga
The original version of the article was published on 1st March 2023 in “The Daily Guardian”
Last week, Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Shelly Oberoi was elected as the new mayor of Delhi securing 150 votes out of 266, after a slew of failed attempts to elect the mayor of the city, which conducted its municipal elections in December 2022. As per governing laws, the mayor of the city must be elected a month after the conclusion of the civic polls. However, the growing political rivalry between the AAP, which is in power in Delhi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls the centre, led to delays in mayoral elections. In the municipal polls held in the city in December 2022, the AAP won the civic body, securing 134 out of the 250 wards.
The BJP, which had ruled the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for the past 15 years, lost control of the civic body, and only managed to secure 104 wards. The BJP and AAP, have been in a constant fight in the capital as the AAP has formed three successive governments in Delhi in 2013, 2015, and 2020, while the BJP has continued to win all seven Lok Sabha seats in the capital in 2014 and 2019.
Mayor Shelly Oberoi will be responsible for the working of the unified MCD, which was merged last year due to the Amendment of the Municipal Corporation Act, 1957. However, despite the appointment of the mayor, the two parties continued to clash as members of the standing committee were being elected in the House, as the voting process went on till midnight. Videos from the Delhi Civic Centre from 23rd February show councillors embroiled in scuffles with each other, while shouting and throwing objects at each other. Several members of both the BJP and the AAP filed cases against each other following the fighting in the civic centre. Let us take a look at the saga of the Delhi mayoral elections, which has been at the centre stage of the capital's politics in the last few months.
Why were the Delhi mayoral elections delayed?
As per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, the Municipal House must meet within a month of the conclusion of the civic polls and elect a mayor. The Delhi municipal elections were held on 4th December 2022 and the results were declared on 7th December. However, since then, there were three attempts to elect a mayor, all of which failed due to the growing dispute between the AAP and the BJP regarding the voting rights of nominated members of the civic body. The AAP, which has a majority with 134 out of 250 elected members, alleged that the BJP is trying to steal its mandate by giving voting rights to the nominated members. The BJP won 104 wards in the municipal elections in December last year. The three attempts to elect a mayor on 6th January, 24th January, and 6th February all failed due to disagreements between the parties, protests, and political bickering between the AAP and the BJP. As per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, the tenure of a mayor lasts for one year, and the act mandates that for the first year of a party's tenure, it must elect a woman for the post of mayor, and for the third year, it must elect a member of a Scheduled Caste (SC) from its councillors. The last mayor of a unified MCD was in 2011.
In the process of electing a mayor, the leading party in the MCD elections nominates a candidate and if other parties also nominate a candidate, a voting process takes place. Elected councillors along with 14 members of the Delhi Legislative Assembly and ten Members of Parliament (MPs) from Delhi's Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are eligible to participate in the voting. While the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act clearly states that nominated members (or aldermen), cannot vote in House meetings, the BJP had ten people nominated as alderman by Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena and claimed that they had the right to vote in the mayoral election. The move was strongly objected to by the AAP, leading to clashes between the two parties on 6 January.
What is the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act?
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi was established in 1958 as per the Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, with 80 councillors and was expanded over time to accommodate the growing population. In 2012, the MCD was split into three bodies to help manage the growing population of the city. However, in March last year, the Lok Sabha passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which unified the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) into the Municipal Corporation of Delhi ten years after the trifurcation of the civic body. As per the legislation, the three civic bodies were unified to ensure more efficient utilisation of resources and to reduce the financial pressures on the three bodies. The centre claimed that financial constraints had left the MCD “incapacitated to make timely payment of salaries and retirement benefits to their employees”. The Bill also stated that the 2011 trifurcation of the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi was “uneven” in terms of territorial divisions and revenue-generating potential.
One of the major changes brought about by the 2022 Amendment is that the complete control of the MCD would be transferred to the centre. This means the central government would have more control over the body than the Delhi government. Other changes include a provision which fixes the number of seats in the civic body to 250, which currently stands at 272, leading to a delimitation exercise. The centre will also appoint a special officer to oversee the functions of the Corporation. The Amendment mandates the establishment of a new e-governance system for citizen services to increase transparency in the administration of the civic body.
Civic bodies should focus on citizens, not politics
The saga of the Delhi mayoral elections has focused on the ongoing tussle between the BJP and the AAP as both parties have taken the election as an issue of political prestige. Even after the elections, two councillors of the BJP moved the Delhi High Court against mayor Shelly Oberoi's decision to declare a vote invalid during MCD's Standing Committee election. While the narrative of the civic polls has completely shifted to the tug-of-war between the parties, several political analysts point out that the MCD should focus on grappling with municipal issues that plague the city, rather than focusing on internal party politics and issues. The MCD is one of the largest municipal bodies in the world as it has the responsibility of providing civic services to a population of around 20 million living in the city. Municipal issues such as the upkeep of city roads, drains, municipal schools, public health facilities, and sanitation, all fall under the purview of the MCD.
The need of the hour is to focus on the provision of these, rather than on the internal politics and elections of the civic body. Upon her election, Oberoi said she will work on fulfilling the “10 guarantees” promised to people before the MCD polls, which includes improving schools, hospitals, parks, the beautification of Delhi, as well as addressing the issue of unauthorised colonies and the various landfills in the city. The MCD had been running without an elected body since May 2022, and also failed its deadline of passing its annual budget on 15 February.
Shreya Mehta/New Delhi
Contributing reports by Ratika Khanna, Anushka Verma and Aryaman Pathak, Researchers at Polstrat.
From Polstrat, a non-partisan political consultancy which aims to shift the narrative of political discourse in the country from a problem-centric to a solutions-oriented approach.