Dinesh Bhardwaj/Trinew
Chandigarh, 5 September
The government has once again made the ‘first citizen’ of the cities i.e. the chairman/chairperson of the city council and the chairpersons of the municipalities powerful. The government has increased the financial powers of heads of civic bodies. He was angry with the government ever since DD power was snatched from the chairpersons of the civic bodies. Recently, he also had a long conversation with BJP state in-charge Biplab Kumar Deb. On Tuesday, civic body heads of several cities held a meeting with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar regarding their demands.
Officials were present. During this, Urban Local Bodies Minister Dr. Kamal Gupta and Principal Secretary to CM V Umashankar were also present. In the meeting, the government also indicated about increasing the honorarium of civic representatives. The issue of funds for the repair of Dharamshalas in cities also came up in the meeting.
On this it was decided that the bodies would be able to release funds for Dharamshalas. In this context, the department will also issue a notification soon.
Many demands were agreed upon in this meeting which lasted for about two hours. Not only this, the chairman of municipal councils and municipalities has now been empowered to write the Annual Confidential Report (ACR) of the EO of the concerned council and the secretary of the municipality along with other officials of the civic bodies. Although there will be only a few points in this, on which the chairman of the bodies will be able to comment. Three powerful committees will be formed in all the bodies.
Chairman of 11 civic bodies met the CM: Chairman of 11 city councils and municipalities of the state met the CM. These include Ashish Bansal from Tohana, Surabhi Garg from Kaithal, Kanwar Singh from Dharuhera, Bhavani Prasad from Bhiwani, Manish Jain from Firozpur-Jhirka, Sanjay Manocha from Nuh, Balraj Singla from Punhana, Ram Singh Solanki from Ellenabad, Anuradha Saini from Jind and Narnaul. Chairperson Kamlesh Saini was involved.
Honorarium will be increased: Rajni Inderjit Virmani, chairperson of the state level association of chairpersons of urban bodies and chairperson of Gohana Municipal Council, said that the state government has also agreed to increase the honorarium of chairmen and councilors.
Since 2014, an honorarium of Rs 10,500 and Rs 7,500 is being given to the chairman of the Municipal Council and Rs 7,500 to the councilor and Rs 7,500 to the chairman of the municipality and Rs 5,000 to the councillor. The Chief Minister has indicated an unprecedented increase in this honorarium soon.
These will be committees
Financial committees will be formed in the bodies. Officers and ward councilors will also be included in this committee. This committee will approve the tender for development works in the city. On objection of the committee, the officials of the civic body will not be able to float the tender. The Monitoring Committee will have the powers to check all financial accounts to see whether the work is being done as per the terms of the tender or not. This committee will be able to stop the ongoing development work in between. Similarly, the third payment approval committee will be formed. The CM also suggested to include the local ward councilor in this committee, whose payment for the development works done here has to be done. A unanimous decision was also taken on this.
