The Telangana Legislative Assembly will meet on July 18 and 19 to consider and pass the New Municipal Act, in formulating which Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has taken a keen interest.
He held a series of meetings in the last few days with officials to finetune the proposed legislation aimed at bringing down corruption to zero level in urban local bodies.
The new Municipal Act, apart from various features, details duties and responsibilities of people’s representatives, which should ensure efficient service delivery within stipulated time-lines and address the issues and grievances of the public.
The new draft act after approval by the Chief Minister has been sent to the Law department for vetting.
The bill will be introduced on July 18 and a day’s time would be provided for the legislators to go through it. After deliberations on the bill, it will be passed the next day on July 19. It will be a special session only to consider and pass the Act and there will not be any other business like Question Hour. The Legislative Council will meet only on July 19 to pass the Act.
After the Act is passed by the legislature, elections are likely to be held during the first week of August.
The Chief Minister decided to revamp the Municipal Act to bring about transparency and do away with discretion of officers and staff of the municipalities and corporations in the wake of continuous neglect of basic responsibilities by the urban local bodies to provide sanitation, hygiene, effective garbage disposal, greenery, maintenance of roads and drainage, sources said. He noticed that the major focus of municipal employees was on regulatory role of building permissions and issue of trade licence which, however, resulted more in violation of stipulated rules than in enforcing them, they said.
In accordance with the mandate given by the Chief Minister, the committee of officials drafted the New Municipal Act and finetuned it after Mr. Rao went through it carefully and pointed out several loopholes and directed them to plug them. The Act has provisions for stringent action against erring employees and to streamline development of towns in a proper manner.
The new Municipal Act is one of the three pieces of legislation conceived by the Chief Minister to bring about qualitative change in administration and governance. The other two are new Panchayat Raj Act that has already been enacted and the proposed Comprehensive Land Administration and Management Act in the place of Revenue Act.
The Chief Minister also directed the officials that an orientation and training programme be organised for municipal commissioners to create awareness about the new Act and to make them understand the role and responsibilities of each municipal employee and consequences of their neglect.
