 "MCD")
From regaining its unified identity after its trifurcation 10 years ago to a fresh delimitation exercise and a subsequent civic poll -- the Municipal Corporation of Delhi hogged the headlines for larger part of the year 2022.
It will remain in the news in early 2023 too, as Delhi will get its mayor on January 6 after the high-stakes elections held on December 4.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had come into being in April 1958 and its mayor wielded influential power and carried a huge prestige till 2012 when the corporation was spilt into three separate civic bodies, each having its own mayor.
But, in 2022, the Centre brought a legislation to unify the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (64 wards) into a single entity, though it had capped the total number of wards at 250, down from 272 wards earlier.
Thus, after the mayoral poll in January, Delhi will get a mayor for the city as a whole after a gap of 10 years.
The mayoral poll is slated to take place a month after the counting of votes took place on December 7.
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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had emerged as a clear winner in the polls, bagging 134 wards and ending the BJP's 15-year rule in the civic body. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 104 wards to finish second, while the Congress won nine seats in the 250-member municipal House which will convene on January 6 for the first time after the 2022 civic polls.
This was also the first municipal elections after the redrawing of the wards in the year gone by, the exercise being necessitated after the Centre brought a legislation in Parliament to unify the three local bodies.
The Parliament on April 5 had passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill-2022 to unify three civic bodies in the national capital into a new unified entity, which capped the number of total wards to 250. It received the assent of the president on April 18.
The unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi came into effect from May 22, with Gyanesh Bharti and Ashwani Kumar taking charge as its municipal commissioner and special officer, respectively.
The post of special officer will cease to exist in the MCD after the new 250-member House comes into being.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had on October 17 issued the final gazette notification for redrawing of municipal wards in Delhi, which had paved the way for the civic polls that took place in December 2022.
The 800-page gazette notification stated that the number of municipal wards in Delhi will now be 250.
The total number of seats reserved for members of the Scheduled Castes in the MCD in proportion to their number is also determined to be 42, the government had said.
The MHA had in July set up a three-member panel led by State Election Commissioner Vijay Dev for a fresh delimitation of the municipal wards. The panel had received over 1,700 suggestions and objections to the draft report.
Prior to this, the delimitation exercise in Delhi was last conducted in 2016 and the number of wards was kept at 272 with each having an average population of 60,000 considering a variation of 10 to 15 per cent.
Civic polls were earlier slated to be held in April.
The BJP, which was ruling the three municipal corporations -- NDMC, SDMC and EDMC -- in Delhi for over a decade before their reunification in May this year, was in power in the unified MCD from 2007-2012. The saffron party was dislodged by the AAP in the municipal polls in which landfill sites, waterlogging, sanitation and education were among the key issues for voters.
In the December 4 polls, 1,349 candidates had tested their fortunes, while the voter turnout was 50.48 per cent.
In the 2017 civic election, the BJP had won 181 of the 270 wards. Polling could not be held on two seats due to the death of candidates. The AAP had won 48 wards and the Congress 27. The voting percentage that year was around 53.
All eyes are now on the mayoral polls due on January 6.
Three nominations -- two from the AAP and one from the BJP -- have been received for the post of Delhi mayor, MCD officials have said.
However, one candidate of the AAP is a back-up candidate, party sources said.
The last date to file nominations for the posts of mayor, deputy mayor and six members of the standing committee of the MCD was December 27.
The nominees for the post of mayor are -- Shelly Oberoi and Ashu Thakur (AAP), and Rekha Gupta (BJP). Oberoi is AAP's main contender.
The nominees for the post of deputy mayor are -- Aaley Mohammad Iqbal and Jalaj Kumar (AAP), and Kamal Bagri (BJP).
The post of mayor in Delhi sees five single-year terms on a rotation basis, with the first year being reserved for women, the second for open category, third for reserved category, and the remaining two also being in the open category.
The MCD headquarters will be housed in the towering Civic Centre. In 1958, it had began its journey from the historic 1860s-era Town Hall in old Delhi, and was shifted to the swanky complex in April 2010.
The Central Library of the MCD, set up in 1958, which has some very rare books in its possession, including an original copy of the Constitution of India, was shifted to the 28-storey high complex -- Civic Centre -- in December 2022.
Spurt in dengue cases also kept municipal authorities busy in 2022. Over 4,300 cases of this vector-borne disease were reported in the year gone by, and seven confirmed deaths due to it.
However, 37 cases of fatalities due to dengue infection and its complications as reported this year from various hospitals were sent to the Dengue Death Review Committee for examination, a senior official had earlier said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
