OPINION

In the medieval times one of the early Sultans to have ruled Delhi, though briefly, was Nasiruddin Mahmud. Historical texts refer to a very interesting fact about how an announcement was made regarding his entry into the court. It would be said, “The rule of the Lord of the world extends from Delhi to Palam.” It’s time that the residents of the 10 Janpath realised if they were in close race with Mahmud.

This comparison was necessitated as Mahmud failed to realise his actual worth and continued to live life, to use much clichéd expression, kingsize. The Nehru-Gandhi family in behaving in similar manner is causing harm to their cause than adding any value to their charisma.

On April 14, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated on the premises of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library a museum in the memory of every other Prime Minister. Invitations were sent out to the relatives of all the living former Prime Ministers and the next of kin of late former Prime Ministers.

The Nehru-Gandhi family members, who draw their legacy from three Prime Ministers – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, chose not to attend, for reasons not really known to anybody. Dr Manmohan Singh, the last Prime Minister given by the Congress could not attend due to ill health.

Till about a week back, Jahangirpuri was hardly known to the city it exists in. The best introduction to Jahangirpuri beyond the subterranean cultural world of Delhi was that of a Metro station.

Not that Jahagirpuri itself has a great Metro traffic but is connecting station for those going to the new centres of higher education across the border at Sonipat in Haryana. The buses of these institutions frequent Jahagirpuri Metro station for the pick and drop of the students.

Coming back to Jahangirpuri and the other colonies of similar nomenclature, they have always made to headlines for the wrong reasons. Excepting for Janakpuri, which was the first planned sub-city by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), most of the remaining residential colonies going by the name of ‘Puri’ are either resettlement colonies or unauthorized colonies.

The summer heat has warmed up politics in the national Capital. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suddenly become aggressive and its members are out ‘exposing’ the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led Delhi government. Whether they would be able to have any success in their endeavour only time would say.

The party strategists see AAP now as a real time threat as they could emerge as challengers in the two BJP-ruled states – Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, which are going to the polls next. In their enthusiasm to have a ‘Congress-mukht Bharat’, the party leaders now realize that AAP which till the other day was viewed as convenient tool to cut into the Congress votes was actually now becoming a big time usurper.

In the last round of the assembly polls, AAP formed government in Punjab with a thumping majority and in Uttarakhand and Goa cut into sufficient number of Congress votes to block the grand old party’s attempt at forming the government. There are clear indications that with the Congress in complete disarray, its votes are shifting in bulk and AAP is the biggest beneficiary, a repetition of Delhi model in the other states too.

With the passage of the MCD amendment act by both the houses of Parliament, MCD is all set to evolve into its new avatar. The new act would ensure that whosoever may win majority in the house, the command and control of the civic services in the national Capital would remain with the ruling party at the Centre.

With MCD gone, what remains in the name of Delhi government is a maimed and moth-eaten structure. In fact the unbundling of the MCD in 2012 was a major move forward in delegation of power to the local government including the responsibility to fund and finance the civic services.

With MCDs starved for funds by the state government, largely for political reasons, the Arvind Kejriwal government in a way lost the moral authority to oppose Centre’s move to reunify the bodies. The Centre presumably made the move to ‘save’ the civic bodies going bankrupt and civic services in the national Capital coming to standstill.

The larger question following the move is whether it’s now financially and structurally prudent to have a local assembly and a state government in the national Capital. With the Kejriwal government having used the floor of assembly to raise a banner against the Centre on several occasions, the Lieutenant Governor has issued a dictum for some time now, which puts an embargo on Assembly to ask questions and move motions, resolutions, etc., on subjects constitutionally reserved for him.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah last week presented the bill in parliament to unify the three municipal bodies of Delhi into one – the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which was passed in Lok Sabha without much ado. The move, as and when the law comes into being, will restore the relations between the Delhi government and the MCD to pre-2012 days.

This move would give more autonomy to the unified corporation vis-à-vis the state government, to the extent of bypassing it thus adding to the multiplicity of authority in the national Capital. The trifurcation of the MCD in 2012 on the initiative of then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was a move to bring the local governance under the city government. This would now stand neutralized.