The Hindu : New Delhi News : Campaign to make Councillors accountable

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Thursday, Apr 12, 2007
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New Delhi

Campaign to make Councillors accountable

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Eager to make the Councillors of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi more accountable to the citizens, non-government organisation Satark Nagrik Sangathan has launched a campaign for transparency and accountability in utilisation of Councillor funds and has sought framing of guidelines for the purpose.

"As we came to know through our interactions with individual voters and citizens' groups that most people are not aware of how their Councillors were spending the funds, the organisation had in October 2006 launched a campaign on obtaining information on utilisation of funds by the Councillors by using the Right to Information Act. Details of all works undertaken using the Councillor funds during 2002-2007 were sought,'' said Anjali Bhardwaj of SNS.

The results were surprising, to say the least. "The Councillors did not seem to be spending their funds on the most pressing priority development needs of their wards. And we found that there were no guidelines for Councillors to spend their funds,'' said Ms. Bhardwaj, adding that this prompted SNS to launching an initiative to demand that guidelines be clearly spelt out for allocation of Councillor funds.

Ms Bhardwaj said, "these guidelines should lay down the broad categories, in order of priority, on which funds should be spent and specify mechanisms that the Councillors should adopt to consult with members of their constituency to find out their most pressing needs.'' Ms. Bhardwaj said as part of the campaign the Sansthan was also disseminating this information in different wards to inform people how Councillors allocated funds at their disposal in the past five years.

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