MCD came into being in Apr 1958, modelled on 'Bombay Municipal Corporation'

The Delhi Municipal Corporation Bill having been passed by both the Houses of Parliament was assented by the President on December 28, 1957.

New Delhi: The erstwhile unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had come into being in April 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 the media, 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. According to the wording of the DMC Act 1957, "Municipal Government of Delhi was being administered as per the provisions of the Punjab District Boards Act, 1883 (2 of 1883) and the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 (3 of 1911)". To run the municipal affairs of Delhi, there were various bodies and local authorities, including Municipal Committee, Delhi; Notified Area Committee, Civil Station; Notified Area Committee, Red Fort; Municipal Committee, Delhi-Shahdara; Municipal Committee, West Delhi; Municipal Committee, South Delhi; Notified Area Committee, Mehrauli; Notified Area Committee, Najafgarh; and Notified Area Committee, Narela, it said. Other local bodies were District Board, Delhi; Delhi State Electricity Board; Delhi Road Transport Authority; and Delhi Joint Water and Sewage Board, the Act said.

"With so many bodies and local authorities looking after the municipal affairs, complications and problems were being faced by the various authorities as well as by the public. A need to have a unified body to administer the Municipal Government of Delhi was strongly felt. Accordingly to consolidate and amend the laws relating to the Municipal Government of Delhi, the Delhi Municipal Corporation Bill was introduced in the Parliament," it said. The Delhi Municipal Corporation Bill having been passed by both the Houses of Parliament was assented by the President on December 28, 1957.

The MCD thus came into being on April 7, 1958 when the Delhi got its first mayor, evolving out of the municipal administration system that began around 1860s. The headquarters of the newly-formed civic body was at the historic Town Hall in Chandni Chowk area, in which the earlier Delhi municipality was also housed, and where the MCD remained till late 2000s, before moving base to the swanky Civic Centre in front of the New Delhi railway station.

Lutyen's Delhi area governed by the New Delhi Municipal Committee (later New Delhi Municipal Council) and Delhi Cantonment areas were kept out of the ambit of the new corporation. The erstwhile unified MCD was then trifurcated in 2011 and three new civic bodies came into being in 2012 -- North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). From 80 councillors in 1957, through successive delimitation, the number of wards was expanded to 134 and eventually to 272 in 2007. Currently, the NDMC and SDMC have 104 wards each while the EDMC has 64 wards since the trifurcation.

The Centre recently made a move to reunify the three corporations into a single entity, and has bought a bill for it, with allegations from various quarters that it was meant to "stall the municipal polls in Delhi" which were due in April this year. The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was passed by Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The bill seeks to unify the three municipal corporations into a single, integrated and well-equipped entity to ensure a robust mechanism for synergised and strategic planning and optimal utilisation of resources, Home Minister Amit Shah said.

As Delhi is on way to get a unified municipal corporation once again, many constitutional experts recalled the inception and journey of the erstwhile MCD which they said was a "very powerful body" with a "very powerful mayor". Old documents and archival reports, pertaining to the period when the MCD was being conceptualised after merging a number of existing local bodies, mention that it was modelled after the Bombay Municipal Corporation or BMC (now Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) that was set up by the British in the second half of the 19th century to administer the then Bombay Presidency.

Former Delhi chief secretary and ex-state election commissioner Rakesh Mehta said, "The MCD was conceptualised on the lines of the Bombay Municipal Corporation". On the proposed reunification, he said, "The MCD already has the infrastructure, the Civic Centre has a House to accommodate all the councillors in one place, and mayor too will have a greater stature by virtue of being the first citizen of the city, as it was pre-trifurcation".

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. S K Sharma, former secretary, Lok Sabha, said the stature and prestige of the Delhi mayor, will grow manifold after reunification as trifurcation had "reduced the stature" since areas, power and influence, everything had been divided.

"In unified MCD, mayor was the number one citizen of Delhi and a mayor received foreign dignitaries at airport and accorded civic receptions at Red Fort or Ramlila Maidan," he said. Delhi Transport Undertaking (later Delhi Transport Corporation), Delhi water board and some of the other units were also under the erstwhile MCD earlier.

PTI