East Mayor rejects proposal to rent House

Mayor of East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) on Wednesday turned down the proposal of the commissioner to rent out the Municipal Corporation House for private functions, as it was 'against the dignity of the House'.

'It is against the dignity of the House to rent it out for private functions. It will be only used for sittings of the House and meetings,' said Dr Annapurna Mishra, Mayor of EDMC, after rejecting the proposal of the Commissioner. 

'I have never heard even a single case where the hall used for sittings of the House is rented for private functions. In private functions, participants smoke cigarettes, chew gutkha and even drink alcohol, which will destroy the sanctity of the House,' added Mishra.

The Mayor also directed commissioner S S Yadav to finish all the pending work of redesigning the hall so that next meeting of the House could be organised properly. The government has provided an auditorium to EDMC at its Patparganj Head Office to hold the meetings of the House with a capacity of over 500 seats but the first sitting was organised in tent as a symbolic protest by BJP councillors against poor infrastructure provided to East Delhi.

'We want the House in the form of a House, not as an auditorium. It must be redesigned as House and must look like it,' said Mehak Singh, chairman of Standing Committee, EDMC. Singh was instrumental in organising the first sitting of the house in tent.

The Commissioner of EDMC, S S Yadav, had put forward the model of House-cum-Auditorium, in which he had proposed to remove three front rows of the auditorium and fit it with tables for councillors and renovate the stage. The remaining seats were to be intact to make it suitable for renting to private functions. DSIIDC, the parent owner of the auditorium has earned over Rs 60,00,000 in 2010-11 by renting it to private functions. The proposal of the commissioner was based on to earn this much revenue by renovating it in the form of House-cum-Auditorium.