New unified Delhi civic body to have base at Civic Centre

New Delhi: As the national Capital is set to get a new unified municipal corporation, the swanky and towering Civic Centre in the heart of Delhi is set to become its headquarters, with officials saying there is "enough space" in the existing main hall to accommodate all members of the House that will come into being after civic polls.

Parliament on Tuesday passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022, with the Rajya Sabha giving its nod to it through a voice vote after negating all amendments sought by the opposition.

The number of seats in the merged municipal corporation of Delhi will not exceed 250, and a special officer may be appointed to oversee its function till the first meeting of the body is held under the reunification law, according to the bill.

Since the trifurcation of the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the NDMC and the SDMC have 104 wards each, while the EDMC has 64 wards, spanning 272 wards in total.

While the headquarters of the NDMC and SDMC are housed in the state-of-the-art Civic Centre complex, whose tallest block is 28-storey high, EDMC is based out of Udyog Sadan at Patparganj. The meetings of House of NDMC and SDMC, both by turns, are held at the capacious Aruna Asaf Ali Sabhagar — the main municipal hall of the civic centre.

Now, with the number of wards set to be revised as per the bill, the size of the House will grow from its current strength.

"The new civic body that will come into being once the bill becomes an Act, and after the fresh delimitation exercise will have members, not exceeding 250. And, we have enough space to accommodate all members in the Aruna Asaf Ali Sabhagar," a senior official said.

He said, even for conducting meetings of the Standing Committee of the civic body that will come into being, "there is enough space in the hall meant for such purposes.

While NDMC has six zones, SDMC has four and EDMC

two zones.

Sources earlier had said that the delimitation commission will start the exercise to reorganise municipal wards in accordance with the population in respective Assembly segments.

"The delimitation exercise alone will take around 6-7 months. After the delimitation exercise is completed, its report has to be notified by the Centre and then the process of rotation of wards, and other poll exercises will be started. So overall it is likely to take a year to conduct municipal elections in Delhi," a source had said.

Civic polls were due in Delhi in April 2022.

The terms of the three corporations — SDMC, NDMC and EDMC — end on May 18, May 19 and May 22 respectively.

The erstwhile MCD had come into being on April 7, 1958 and it was set up after amalgamating several local bodies and administrative committees, according to archival records.

According to old documents and reports accessed by PTI, and views of many experts, the MCD was modelled on the lines of the 'Bombay Municipal Corporation', when it was being envisaged by policy-makers, around a decade after India's independence.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi had come into being under the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957.

From 80 councillors in 1957, through successive delimitation, the number of wards was expanded to 134 and eventually to 272 in 2007.

The MCD had begun its journey at the historic Town Hall in old Delhi, where it was housed from 1958 till about 2009, after which it was shifted to the Civic Centre on Minto Road opposite the New Delhi railway station. Prior to the MCD, it housed the old Delhi municipality.