Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said that most states have not met the requirements of the Constitution (74th Amendment) Act, 1992 in respect of the devolution of powers and responsibilities to municipal bodies.
Disclosing this in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Naidu further said that most municipal bodies in the country are financially constrained and lack capacity to discharge functions as per the 74th Amendment to the Constitution.
Responding to a question raised by independent member of Parliament Rajiv Chandrasekhar, the Minister gave details of the status of implementation of the 74th Amendment to the Constitution under which municipal bodies were to be empowered with transfer of funds, functions and functionaries for effective local governance.
Naidu informed that only ten of the twenty nine states have transferred functions under 12th Schedule to the urban local bodies. These states being: Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Punjab.
The minister further said, under Article 243ZE of the Constitution, 14 states were required to constitute Metropolitan Planning Committees for all metropolitan areas but only six states have done so.
These include - Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The states still to constitute such committees being - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, MP, Uttar Pradesh and the newly formed state of Telangana.
Inadequate devolution of functions and finances to urban local bodies has been identified as one of the major hurdles in improving urban governance which in turn has adversely impacted implementation of various urban development initiatives.
This issue had been flagged by Naidu at a Conclave of Ministers of Urban Development and Local Urban Bodies held in New Delhi on July 3, 2014.