What Does It Take To Become A Municipal Corporation In Gujarat?

Currently, the status upgrade to municipal corporation is arbitrary, officials at the Gujarat Urban Development Department told The Secretariat.

 

Gujarat has eight municipal corporations, including the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the Surat Municipal Corporation, and 156 municipalities.

 

Until early 2000, there was some semblance of following protocols, like those of the urban development department being able to allocate enough funds to corporations to build social infrastructure that met citizens' expectations, enhance land value and economic growth, said Paresh Sharma, Gujarat’s former Chief Town Planner.

 

Even though parameters vary from state to state for upgrading municipalities to municipal corporations, mostly all states follow the census standards while forming municipalities, said Anil Roy, Senior Associate Professor at the CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

 

The census defines Urban Area or Town as a settlement with a minimum population of 5,000 people, with three-quarters of its male population being employed in the non-farm sector. Population density should be at least 400 per square kilometre, it says.

 

“These are outdated parameters,” said former town planner Sharma.

 

However, with the rapid rise in the urban population, upgradation cannot be avoided. So, population should be one of the basic parameters, said CEPT’s Roy.

 

Going by the population criteria, in a recent Chintan Shibir (brainstorming meeting), the state government expressed the view that municipalities with 3 lakh population should be upgraded to municipal corporations. They also discussed upgrading five towns - Gandhidham, Surendranagar-Wadhwan, Morbi, Navsari, and Vapi - in the first phase, followed by Anand, Porbandar, Bhuj, Mehsana, Patan, Bharuch, and Nadiad in Phase 2, as these towns have a population ranging between 2 to 3 lakhs.

 

However, there are divergent views. “Population is not at all a criteria or parameter to upgrade municipalities to municipal corporations,” a senior officer with the Urban Development Department, on condition of anonymity, told The Secretariat. “We go by the following sections - 4, 5, 6, of the Gujarat Provincial Municipal Corporation Act 1949, and 243Q of the Constitution of India and upgrade it.” He was referring to the sections dealing with the election of councillors, mayor and deputy mayors, appointment of the standing committee, and tenure.

 

Another officer from the department, who did not wish to be named, said, “There are no parameters. If the population parameter of 3 lakhs was followed, Junagadh and Gandhinagar would have never got upgraded and would have had to wait for long.” He also dismissed the claim that 52 percent of Gujarat’s population lives in urban areas, alleging these were exaggerated numbers.

 

Why Upgrade?

 

Gujarat has eight municipal corporations - Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Junagadh, and Gandhinagar. Though these corporations have their revenue resources and also get funds for mega projects from the state, they are struggling to meet social infrastructure demand, such as healthcare, education and housing, due to funds and manpower shortages, among others. Then why are municipalities, their smaller counterparts with lesser power and resources, keen to upgrade?

 

A municipality is headed by a Chief Officer, who works with a small team of sector experts to plan and execute development projects through the district administration. But if it is upgraded to a municipal corporation, it gets an IAS officer as the Commissioner, a town planner, civil, mechanical engineers, and several senior officers from the state pool to execute development projects, prioritise them and even pressurize the state machinery to release funds quickly.

 

For this reason, even though the Gandhidham municipality had been pitching for a status upgrade for the past decade, the state government had not complied, said Ishita Tilwani, President, Gandhidham Municipality.

 

When municipalities get their status changed, the first and foremost thing they adopt is organized planning, said Bipinkumar Gamit, Senior Town Planning Officer of the Junagadh Municipal Corporation, which was upgraded as a corporation in 2004.

 

Town planning schemes are implemented, which take up the execution of basic amenities from the planning stage, like roads, drainage, stormwater pipelines, public utilities like gardens, community halls, and land reservation for social or religious causes, even before people start moving into that area, Gamit added.

 

Not Like-For-Like Model

 

Two years ago, the Rajasthan government fixed certain parameters for Urban Local Bodies. It stipulated that to form a municipal corporation, there should be a minimum population of 5 lakhs, or the town should be a sub-divisional headquarter of the district, with a population density of 1000 per square kilometres, the municipality’s revenue should be Rs 500 per capita, with half of the population’s livelihood obtained from non-agricultural activities.

 

Experts agree that Gujarat should also set minimum parameters for upgrading municipalities. Considering Gujarat’s development and population growth, Rajasthan’s parameters do not suit the state, said its former chief town planner Sharma. Instead, Gujarat’s criteria should be increased contribution to the Gross Domestic Product and increase in land value, he said.

 

For CEPT’s Roy, unless corporations enjoy full autonomous status, akin to the powers that a mayor enjoys in cities in the Western countries, there was no point in any upgradation. There should also be a council of mayors and the corporations should be mainly focused on improving the quality of people’s life, he added.