All-powerful MCD Standing Committee is the bone of contention between AAP and BJP

By Avinash Prabhakar

New Delhi, Feb 23 (SocialNews.XYZ) The ruckus in the MCD House created by the BJP and AAP councillors continued way past midnight on Wednesday, forcing its adjournment till Friday morning when it will meet again to elect the members of the all-powerful Standing Committee.

While the Mayor is the nominal head of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), she/he has very limited powers like calling meetings of the House and administratively managing the same.

The real power lies with the Standing Committee, which effectively manages the corporation with financial functions, approval to projects, discussing, finalising and implementing the policies for the capital city etc.

The members of both parties are trying hard to gain dominance in the Standing Committee, which was witnessed during the ongoing session when councillors were seen engaging in sloganeering and hurling water bottles at each other to further delay the process to elect its members.

In total, seven candidates are in the fray for the six posts that get elected to the Standing Committee. The AAP has fielded four candidates - Amil Malik, Sarika Choudhary, Mohini Zeenwal and Raminder Kaur, while the BJP has fielded three candidates - Kamaljeet Sehrawat, Gajendra Daral and Pankaj Loothra.

While the committee has 18 members, six of them are elected in the House directly while the remaining 12 are chosen by the ward committees.

The Standing Committee members are elected through the preferential system in the House after the election of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

In the ongoing MCD session, there are 250 elected councillors. AAP has 134 councillors, BJP 104, Congress nine and three are Independent candidates.

However, barring one, all the other Congress councillors abstained from voting to elect the Mayor and Deputy Mayor on Wednesday. If the Congress continues to refrain from voting to elect the Standing Committee members on Friday, the councillor getting the first 35 votes will be elected to the committee.

The committee has a chairperson and a deputy chairperson, who are elected from among the members. The party which has majority in the Standing Committee will have control over policy and financial decisions of the House.

Source: IANS