Nowhere to turn: No elections for city corps

Urban infrastructure and services suffer as municipal elections remain inordinately delayed due to the lack of political will.

In the heart of Chennai, on a weekday evening in November 2017, a relentless deluge descended from the heavens. Streets slowly transformed into rivers. The torrent continued unabated through the night and panic began to spread. It was a grim reminder for many. The scars of the 2015 floods were still fresh — the tragedy that claimed the lives of over 200 Chennai residents.

In their hour of need, the city’s residents looked to their corporators, supposedly the most accessible elected representatives, for aid. These corridors of power lay eerily vacant —  the terms of their corporators had expired and their offices remained deserted. The elections had been inexplicably delayed by the state government, leaving residents stranded.  

For nearly six years, between 2016 and 2022, Chennai had no corporators elected to its 200-membered city municipal corporation. 

Chennai is far from being the only city facing this issue. Bengaluru does not currently have elected corporators. The term of its municipal corporation concluded over three years ago. 

In 2022, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections were conducted following a seven-month delay. Mumbai, too, does not have sitting corporators as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election has been delayed for close to two years now. Hyderabad, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, and Indore are just a few other cities where corporation elections have been delayed at some point in the past.

“In the absence of corporators, the government officers who assume control are not accountable to the citizens as they have no concern about being of re-elected. Most of them do not even live in the areas they are posted in, so they do not care," says Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of Arappor  Iyakkam, a people’s civic movement in Tamil Nadu. 

“In 2019, Chennai was hit with one of the worst droughts it had ever seen, and the severe water crisis hit slums the hardest. Without corporators, the poorer sections had no one to turn to. In such desperate moments, corporators would have played a vital role in coordinating with the relevant departments to ensure that basic needs were met,” Venkatesan adds. 

At the peak of the second Covid-19 wave in the country, there were many corporations without elected local representatives, including Bengaluru. Civic activist Tara Krishnaswamy says, “The entire range of essential Covid-19 services, including health support, triaging, vaccination and distribution of rations had been deliberately designed to operate at the ward level so that it could reach every last person. However, without a corporator, there was no local leadership. Despite the presence of numerous volunteers willing to assist, the absence of empowered corporators hindered the city’s ability to mount a coordinated response to the crisis.”

Thousands of lives were lost. Many Primary Health Centres remained non-functional or operated charging unjustified fees, with nobody to question them. Access to vaccines and rations was denied to many. Underprivileged communities bore the brunt of the crisis, unable to reach their MLAs or MPs who were far removed from the realities on the ground. 

Tara continues, “MLAs and MPs are overburdened, but frankly it is not even their job to tend to citizen’s basic needs. Your local corporator’s office is probably less than a kilometre away. That is where a citizen could reach out for basic assistance. But without an elected corporator, nobody is accountable for local services. You need to go from pillar to post, from one central office to the other. It is inconvenient and ineffective. Your local corporator could not have sent you away, for they need to get elected again. They need to deliver your needs.”

The situation is not different in Mumbai. “Civic works are being hampered due to lack of corporators. The administrators are acting as per their own will. Earlier, people's representatives were available to solve the problems of common citizens,” says RTI activist and social worker Anil Galgali. “The corporators whose terms have ended now have minimum contact with the public. For civic issues, people used to contact corporators but now they have to go to various government offices,” says Ajit Joshi, an expert in civic affairs. 

India’s tryst with a formal three-tier governance system began in 1994 when the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act came into effect. The most accessible and local level of governance constituted municipal corporations. Corporators and corporations have a unique mandate that differs from that of the other elected representatives. 

They have 18 distinct functions listed in the Constitution that pertain specifically to city governance — such as urban planning, construction of roads and transport infrastructure, management of drainage and water supply, provision and maintenance of public amenities such as parks and playgrounds and so on. 

In India’s big cities, an MP represents around 30 lakh citizens and an MLA represents about 3 lakh citizens. A corporator, on the other hand, represents about 30,000 citizens. 

With corporators having such an impact on day-to-day quality of life, why are these elections delayed? Are there any patterns or common factors causing such delays? These are some of the questions that I set out to explore in a study. 

The results were appalling. Data from 679 municipal corporation elections between 1994 and May 2023 was analysed in the study. 

A whopping 58.8 per cent of municipal corporation elections in India were found to be delayed, since 1994. A shorter delay of 1 to 6 months was observed in 15.7 per cent of elections and a longer delay of more than six months was witnessed in 43.1 per cent of corporation elections. 

The true percentage of delayed elections could be even higher, for the study discounted elections where data was unavailable. The takeaway remains that less than half of municipal corporation elections in India are held on time. 

Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka had the highest percentage of corporation elections that were delayed, standing at 97 per cent and 96 per cent. On the other hand, Himachal Pradesh at 11 per cent and Maharashtra and Rajasthan at 29 per cent each, had the lowest percentage of delayed elections. While this statistic captures the number of instances of delays, the impact can be measured by the magnitude of delays, represented graphically.

A rigorous correlation analysis found that there are no significant patterns for delays across the country — either as per geography, region, size of the corporation, economic power of its constituents or even political parties in power. This shows that delays are prevalent indiscriminately across the entire country. 

The fact that more corporation elections in India have been delayed than conducted on time, is shocking for a country which takes pride in its vast electoral democracy. 

Why do elections get delayed?

According to the study, issues of delimitation and reservation alone have contributed to 60 per cent of the total delayed elections. Another 12 per cent were delayed due to opposition over merging or expansion of the corporation. Other reasons for delays included natural calamities like the Covid-19 pandemic or internal security issues as in J&K or a disagreement over electoral technicalities. 

In conversation with officials from State Election Commissions (SECs) across four states, all of whom wished to remain anonymous, a major reason for delaying corporation elections is a lack of political will. An official shares, “If the party in power thinks that it may lose the election, or if it wants to control the funds allotted to the corporation, they will try whatever they can to delay the election. Conflicts in delimitation, reservation and expansion are artificially created to cause delays. They are used as an excuse. Even though we know their motivations, there is nothing that we can do.”

In practice, SECs are not completely empowered and depend on state governments to complete the delimitation of ward boundaries and to notify reservations for women as well as marginalised communities. 

These activities are carried out by political actors, providing plenty of scope for delay in delimitation. Appeals are made in courts, often by the SEC themselves. The judiciary attempts to resolve it and deadlines are given, which are eventually not adhered to by state governments. No real enforcement mechanisms exist. 

Municipal corporations also have large budgets. For instance, Bengaluru’s Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike spends around Rs 10,000 crore each year, while Mumbai’s BMC spend is budgeted for Rs 50,000 crore of spends this year – both examples of corporations currently running without any locally elected representatives overseeing them.

It always seems to be in the best interest of the state governments and MLAs to not conduct local corporation elections. Using administrators who act as proxies, it is commonly believed that the MLAs control the lion’s share of funds allocated to corporations. 

What’s the fix?

Three decades after the Nagarpalika Act was instituted to give municipalities constitutional status and an increase in autonomy for urban local bodies, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the legislation has fallen short of accomplishing its intended objectives. 

The Act provided a broad framework and left it to the states to legislate further. This has resulted in more harm than good – with states accruing more power, leaving corporations fighting for funds, autonomy and relevance. 

In this context, the SECs either have to be given complete autonomy and resources to carry out their functions or the Election Commission of India (ECI) should take over the conduct of elections and build up its organisational capacity to do so. 

A standardised election process and structure should be defined, governing all aspects such as (a) conduct of elections before term expiry, as meticulously done for state and union elections, (b)  process of upgrading and expanding municipal corporation limits, (c) carrying out the delimitation and reservation exercise for wards and (d) deciding the composition of corporations and their leadership structure.

Do citizens care enough?

The only way this nationwide issue can be fixed, and the above solutions can be implemented, is if the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha pass legislation to this effect. That would only happen if there is significant public demand for it. 

Without such a mass public demand for strengthening local institutions, it is nearly impossible that those in power would want to change the status quo. 

“People have gradually started becoming indifferent to what is happening,” claims Sidharth Mishra, author of Delhi Political. “The powers of the lower bodies are gradually being taken away. Nobody will miss corporators if their functions are curbed. This reduces the quality of corporators coming in as well.” 

City corporations are vital to address dilapidated urban infrastructure. In Hubballi, the lane in which Sripad Dattatreya Gosavi lives is riddled with civic issues. The top of a manhole is broken, the road is not asphalted, the streetlights do not work and the door-to-door garbage collection is erratic. “In the last two years, I have complained to the corporation several times, yet no action has been taken. Earlier the officials used to say we are waiting for the corporator election and now the officials ask me to meet the corporator to get work sanctioned,” he says. 

The election to Hubballi Dharwad Municipal Corporation was finally conducted in 2021 after a three-year delay. On holding a meeting with the elected corporator, Gosavi and his neighbours were finally successful in getting operational streetlights for their lane, while their remaining issues are still being worked on.

(With inputs from E T B Sivapriyan in Chennai, Mrityunjay Bose in Mumbai, Dhruva Panyam in Bengaluru and Pavan Kumar H in Hubballi)