Saturday musing: how many bosses does Delhi need? 

The Union Territory of Delhi has more people than almost the entire combined population of London, Paris, Washington DC and Moscow. Its population is also higher than states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand and significantly higher than the population of Goa (1.8 million), Chandigarh (1.2 million) and Puducherry (0.7 million). Its annual revenue is also significantly higher than several of the smaller states, which explains why it is important to be the ‘Boss’ in this ‘city state’.

Administering this huge capital city is becoming more complex by the year. But if public records are any indication, a multiplicity of authorities, three municipal bodies, the New Delhi Metropolitan Corporation and the Cantonment Board have administered the city unevenly, inconsistently and with varying degrees of success.

Law and order and public transport, control over public roads and land, have been contentious issues with neither the central government nor the state willing to share their power. And since police, land and public order have always remained with the Centre, there was little ambiguity or scope for friction.

February 2015 changed all that following a bruising election campaign that saw a landslide victory of Aam Aadmi Party which won 67 of the 70 seats. Prime Minister Narendra Modi typically campaigned for the BJP with his usual aggression and bombast and the party’s defeat was seen as a public humiliation. But smarting under the defeat or not, a Joint Secretary in the Home ministry issued a small notification in May, 2015, declaring that matters related to ‘ Services’—appointment, transfer and punishment of officers—would be controlled by the Centre and not by the elected state government.

This has been challenged by AAP before the Supreme Court and is yet to be adjudicated. Why the Supreme Court, which clubs similar petitions all the time, did not do so while holding forth on the role of the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi is anybody’s guess. And now that the Supreme Court has declared that the Chief Justice of India alone will decide when a case will be heard and who will hear it, nobody can tell when the issue will be settled.

Legally and technically, therefore, the Lieutenant Governor and the Law Ministry appear to be correct when they say that the Supreme Court has not struck down the May, 2015 notification. Therefore, the Union Home Ministry and the Lieutenant General will determine which officer gets posted in which department, for how long and when they get transferred.

The elected Government of Delhi have two options open before it. It can kick and scream, correspond and complain and allow the Lieutenant Governor to sit over its recommendations over matters related to ‘services’. Or it can go about its work, inform the Lieutenant Governor if its decisions are not implemented and over time, expose the delays, inefficiency and corruption in the system. It can of course keep hoping that the present Chief Justice of India would hasten the process and ensure that a judgment is delivered on MHA’s notification before he retires in October.

AAP and the Delhi Chief Minister are right to raise questions of political morality. To expect a Government to deliver but without any control over the administration is like asking a footballer to play with his hands, not legs, tied. Had the government acted with mala fide intentions while posting officers or unduly punishing them, there already exist several remedial measures that officers can seek. There can, therefore, be little doubt that the Centre and the Lieutenant Governor are ‘obstructing’ the elected government—something that the Supreme Court has ruled is not acceptable under the Constitution.

But then Delhi has always been a city of ‘I’ specialists. A city of people with super-inflated egos flaunting their power and reach. It is no surprise, therefore, to find too many authorities in the capital insisting, “I am the boss”.