Councillors kept away during demolition drive

Councillors kept away during demolition drive
The Hindu

HUBLI: An interesting feature of the demolition drive in the city, which has just been concluded, has been the marginalised of peoples' representatives in general and the councillors of the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation in particular.

It was an operation that was planned meticulously by the corporation commissioner Manivannan and executed with fineness in three phases, in which as many as 72 major roads crisscrossing the twin cities, were rid of encroachments.

At no stage in the meticulous preparations were the councillors involved as a body. The councillors were merely informally consulted on an individual basis.

Corporation officials who were involved in the planning justify the approach saying that the work comes under the domain of administrative matters, which is under the exclusive purview of the Commissioner.

Secondly, it was also doubtful whether the corporation would have allowed any such resolution.

When the Commissioner began his work initially in the name of in-house improvements, hardly anybody took him seriously.

Even the steps initiated by him to introduce transparency in the system and the introduction of the corporation website did not cause much ripples.

A perusal of the proceedings of the past, wherein the Commissioner had been authorised to take any action to remove the encroachments, came in handy.

Pact

The first blow for the councillors came when the nexus between them and the contractors' lobby, which used to hold the corporation and the commissioner to ransom on occasions in the past, was quietly broken. The Commissioner signed a memorandum of understanding with the contractors on the rates to be quoted for the tender above the tendered amount and a ceiling of 12 per cent was fixed through discussion, to avoid any lobbying and jockeying for power.

Establishment of zonal offices with powers to meet the needs of the people as part of the decentralisation avoided crowding of the councillors in the head office and councillors interfering in the works of other wards.

The third most important step taken was the constitution of the agenda task groups to ensure private-public participation with a view to take people into confidence on the problems faced and plans proposed by the municipal corporation.

As many as seven agenda groups have been constituted with different tasks, which meet periodically with the corporation officials and discuss matters.

The corporation has also volunteered to provide information to the agenda group members. The commissioner had also opened a separate channel of communication with the people and this proved to be crucial during the demolition drive, when concerted efforts were made to derail the drive and the people refused to fall for it.

When the D-day came and as the JCBs rolled along the busy roads demolishing the encroachments on all major roads, one could notice that hardly any councillors came to the scene either for or against demolition.

Interestingly, when everyone thought the councillors would criticize the commissioner when the subject was broached at a recent meeting, they began singing praises.