The Supreme Court of India has rightly shot down the brazen and legally untenable claim that nominated members of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) may be allowed to vote in the election of its Mayor. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to bend the rules to allow the 10 aldermen, nominated by the Lieutenant-Governor, to vote in the election, despite the law limiting the process to elected Councillors. That a question concerning a mayoral election should engage national attention is due to the political acrimony between the ruling BJP at the Centre and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which runs the elected regime in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The BJP sought to interpret the relevant provisions in the Constitution and the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act in such a way that the specific bar on nominated members voting in “meetings” of the corporation should not be applied to its first meeting, at which the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are elected. It takes a particularly perverse political imagination to argue that “meetings” do not include the “first meeting”. Three attempts to hold the mayoral election, following the MCD polls that took place in December 2022, were stalled by clashes between AAP and BJP councillors over this question. The verdict vindicates the position of AAP, which has 134 councillors in the 250-member Council, against the BJP’s 104.
It is unfortunate that before the Court, the Lt. Governor also took the questionable political stand that the restriction on the right to vote in Article 243R(2) of the Constitution and the proviso to Section 3(3)(b)(i) of the Act was limited to regular meetings, and not to the first meeting of the Council. The Court rejected the argument, noting that the law provides for the nomination of 10 people “with special knowledge and experience in municipal administration”, but without any voting right. In keeping with the Court’s order, Lt. Governor V.K. Saxena has now approved February 22 as the date for the election of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and six members of the Standing Committee. Last year, Parliament passed a law to merge the three corporations in Delhi into a single entity, a decision criticised for reversing the trend of having compact local bodies for better delivery of civic services. Delhi’s lack of statehood is a source of conflict between the Centre and the elected regime in the capital territory, but the political protagonists should not allow Delhi’s administrative structures to be plagued by the tussle. The core message from a Constitution Bench judgment of 2018, that elected bodies should not be undermined by unelected administrators, is yet to hit home.
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