Hindustan Times: Chandigarh: Friday,
October 28, 2016.
Even as the
issue of granting voting rights to nine nominated councillors in the MC House
gains traction a month before a new House is to be elected, a scrutiny of
documents collected on the basis of Right to Information (RTI) Act shows that
the right has no legal basis.
Congress
councillor and former mayor Subhash Chawla sought information under RTI from
the Union government and was told that the home ministry had not issued any
notification providing voting rights to councillors in Chandigarh. The urban
development and the law ministry also have no information on the issue.
Nominated
councillors have been given voting rights since the MC was set up 20 years ago.
THE REPLY TO
THE RTI PLEA
The reply
that Chawla received said that under Article 243 of the Constitution, nominated
councillors do not have voting rights. This can be done provided that the
President may, by public notification, make exceptions and modifications to the
Article.
Chawla, who
even sought information from the UT administration, found that even it does not
have any such notification.
“In reply to
my query, I was supplied with a copy of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act,
1994, as extended to UT Chandigarh,” Chawla says, adding that it was a major
lapse on the part of different Union ministeries as well as the UT
administration. A senior officer with the UT administration admitted there was
no such notification with the administration issued by the President.
It is not as
if the Act is immune to any amendment. It was amended in 1996 when the then BJP
MP Satya Pal Jain got removed the para speaking of the inclusion of the MLA as
an ex-officio member and got included ‘MP’ in the relevant column instead. On
why was the issue of voting rights to nominated councillors not clarified or
included then, Jain told HT, “A Private Member’s Bill was moved, but it never
came up for discussion.”
Pawan Bansal,
who remained MP for 15 years said, “There were lapses in the way the Act was
interpreted, but now the matter is in the court. Let the court decide.”
QUESTION MARK
ON AGENDA APPROVED OVER TWO DECADES
With this,
there is a big question mark on the election of the mayor, the senior deputy
mayor and the deputy mayor since the formation of the MC. Nominated councillors
have almost always played king-makers in these elections. Due to the voting
right they enjoy, nominated councillors have also played a critical role in
rejecting or accepting agenda items worth crores of rupees.
BJP
councillor Satinder Singh who has moved the Punjab and Haryana high court
questioning the voting rights to nominated councillors, said, “The UT legal
department has been found sleeping on the issue. The issue of voting rights has
been controversial. An amendment in the Act is needed to harmonise it with the
Constitution and restore the democratic spirit.”
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