The Hindu : New Delhi News : Congress divided over MCD break-up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 20, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Congress divided over MCD break-up

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI, DEC. 19. The Delhi Cabinet might be reluctant to take up the issue of trifurcation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, but the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, managed to prove a point by getting a resolution passed in the Delhi Assembly on Friday. However, this has split the party wide open inside and outside the Assembly with the rivals claiming that their plea to let the party high command decide on the issue was rejected.

Despite having strength of 47 in the 70-member House, only 23 Congress members were present when the resolution was taken up for voting. Interestingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party legislators supported the ruling party in this endeavour. Political observers feel that the most surprising part of the whole debate on a Private Member resolution, which has little relevance as far as administrative or political action was concerned, was that the MLAs from the Chief Minister's camp one after the other demolished the Congress-ruled MCD terming it as the most corrupt and inefficient civic body. It was a rare sight when members of the Government went out of the way to run down their own party colleagues in the Corporation demanding a split, stating it was part of the party manifesto and election promise.

"It is unfortunate that a situation of confrontation is being sought to be built up by the Chief Minister's camp. We will not fall for the bait and take up all our grievances with the party high command while not crossing the line of discipline. Everything should be decided and sorted out through talks and not confrontation. Let Ms. Sonia Gandhi take a decision on such an important issue,'' a rival Congress leader remarked.

It is another matter that there is bound to be strong reactions from the MCD and another round of allegations and counter allegations. It is no secret that the DPCC president, Ram Babu Sharma, is strongly opposed to the division of MCD but has refused to go public. Instead, he had declared that the matter should be left to the discretion of Ms. Gandhi, whose final decision would be acceptable to all. However, despite this, it was decided to go ahead with the Private Member resolution with the Government maintaining that the MLA concerned had listed the matter on his own and it had nothing to do with the move. What the Government did state was that it could have impressed upon the MLA not to move the resolution and if at all it was moved, it should either have been withdrawn or such sharp criticism of its own colleagues and Government in the MCD should have been avoided.

Surprisingly, Mr. Sharma and some other party colleagues preferred to move out of the House before the resolution was to be taken up for voting in order to silently lodge their protest over the manner in which the whole issue was being handled.

On the other hand, party leaders and MLAs are of the view that instead of focussing total attention on splitting the MCD, the Delhi Government could well push for grant of full Statehood to Delhi. This way it would get more administrative and financial powers. It would also get the powers to decide on the future of MCD on its own after Delhi gets Statehood. There is no talk of this election promise, but a big issue was being made out of trifurcation of MCD, the observers felt.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi