Darjeeling, Aug. 24: The
chairpersons of the four municipalities in the Darjeeling hills have
cried foul at the government’s decision to appoint the district
magistrate as the reviewing officer to look into services being provided
by the civic bodies, saying the municipality is a subject with the GTA
Sabha now.
The municipal affairs department
had issued a notification on November 1, 2013, appointing designated
officers, appellate officers and reviewing officers of
municipalities/notified area authority and municipal corporations. While
the chairpersons of municipalities/notified area authority have been
made the appellate officers, the district magistrate has been made the
reviewing officer of the civic bodies. The designated officer is the
executive officer of the municipality.
Amar Singh Rai,
the chairman of Darjeeling municipality, said: “A meeting of the
chairpersons of four hill municipalities (Darjeeling, Kalimpong,
Kurseong and Mirik), along with the vice-chairpersons and the MLAs of
Darjeeling and Kurseong, was held on Friday to discuss the notification.
We are of the opinion that the notification is insensitive to the fact
that the municipalities have already been transferred to the GTA Sabha.
Instead of the district magistrate, either the principal secretary or
the chief executive of the GTA must be made the reviewing authority of
the hill municipalities,” Rai said today.
The meeting resolved to request the GTA to pass a resolution to this effect.
The four hill municipalities and the GTA are run by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
The notification
gives a detailed list of the services and the timeframe within which the
services are to be provided. For example, sanction for a water
connection to a new household has to be given within 10 days and
similarly, approval for a building plan has to be completed within 60
days.
“If anybody has
any grievance against the designated officer or the department
concerned, he/she can appeal to the (municipal) chairperson according to
the notification. However, if they are not happy with the decision of
the chairperson, it seems they can seek a review of the decision before
the district magistrate,” Rai said.
“We fail to
understand how a decision taken by an elected body can be reviewed by
someone from the executive. Nevertheless, we are not going into this
issue at the moment. We only want the reviewing authority to be from the
GTA,” he added.
The notification
is, however, not clear on whether the district magistrate could review
the decisions of the municipalities with regard to the services.
For example, the
notification sets a timeframe of 60 days for sanctioning a building
plan. But it doesn’t say if the district magistrate has the power to
review the municipality’s decision of not sanctioning a building plan
for whatever reasons.
Even though the
notification was issued in November last year, Rai said, the Darjeeling
municipality received the same in March this year. “Other three hill
municipalities (Kurseong, Kalimpong and Mirik) have not yet received the
notification,” he said.
(http://www.telegraphindia.com)
Post a Comment