Capital conundrum: SC upholds LG's power to nominate MCD aldermen, AAP cries foul

In a verdict that would only further accentuate the acrimony between Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government and the Centre, the Supreme Court on Monday (August 5) upheld the Lieutenant Governor’s powers to independently nominate aldermen to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

The judgment by the apex court bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala comes at a time when the national capital is already grappling with monsoon-time civic chaos while the AAP and the Centre, which appoints the LG, deflect blame at each other.

Ironically, the judgment strengthens the powers conferred upon – and often appropriated by – the LG; the Centre-appointed administrator whose interference in the running of Delhi’s administration the apex court had, through two lengthy verdicts since 2018, sought to curtail.

The current judgment comes against a plea filed by the Delhi government challenging LG VK Saxena’s decision of January 2023 to nominate 10 aldermen to the MCD in the exercise of powers vested in him through the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, 1957. The Act empowers the Delhi LG to nominate people with “special knowledge” in municipal administration to assist the MCD in making decisions of public importance.

Furore over Saxena's move

What caused a political furore over Saxena’s move was the fact that all 10 individuals appointed by him as aldermen turned out to be directly affiliated with the BJP, which had lost power in the MCD a month earlier after having controlled the civic body for 15 years.

Though the appointment of aldermen, until then, rarely made news, Saxena’s decision drew flak from the AAP instantly as the party believed that the LG was acting on the directions of the BJP to “control the MCD through the backdoor” after having narrowly lost the civic body polls to it. In the 250-member MCD, the AAP had won 134 seats against the BJP’s 104.

The AAP’s fears of an LG-enabled BJP coup in the MCD stemmed from the fact that though aldermen have no voting rights in the House meetings or the Mayoral polls, they have a say in the election of members of the civic body’s Standing Committee, whose approval for any civic project worth over Rs 5 crore is mandatory.

A direct consequence of the legal tussle between the AAP and the LG was a near crippling of the functioning of the MCD. In a bid to ostensibly deny the LG and the BJP a chance at holding the AAP-run MCD to ransom through the aldermen, Kejriwal’s party ensured that the Standing Committee was not constituted over the past 16 months, thereby nearly paralysing the process of approvals for any major civic infrastructure project.

More powers to Saxena

Meanwhile, the Centre’s amended GNCTD Bill, meant to reverse the effects of the Supreme Court’s 2018 and 2023 verdicts that curtailed the powers of the LG over Delhi’s bureaucracy, was enacted into law, giving Saxena wide-ranging powers on every matter of Delhi’s governance, while emasculating the AAP government as well as the Delhi Assembly.

That this petulant game of brinkmanship between the AAP and the LG (and, by extension, the BJP) cost Delhi dearly was evident in the wake of recent tragedies that struck an inundated national capital. While the AAP government, with its chief minister languishing in Tihar Jail, and the LG tried to undermine each other at every point, thereby stalling Delhi’s monsoon preparedness works, over the past month alone, three UPSC aspirants drowned at a coaching centre in Delhi’s Old Rajinder Nagar while 14 inmates, including a minor, died at a Delhi-government run Asha Kiran home for the mentally challenged, allegedly for want of proper medical care.

The apex court has now held that the “statutory power under 3(3)(b)(1) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, to nominate persons with special knowledge was vested in the LG... to incorporate constitutional changes” in line with the Constitution’s Article 239AA and Article 239AB and introduction of Part IXA relating to municipalities.

The verdict states that the LG’s power to nominate aldermen is “not a vestige of the past or power of the administrator that is continued by default”. The administrator can thus, in the court’s view, nominate members to the MCD “as per the mandate of the statute and not guided by the aid and advice of the council of ministers.”

AAP gets rattled

The judgment has, expectedly, left the AAP rattled. Sanjay Singh, the AAP’s feisty Rajya Sabha MP, dubbed the verdict as a “big blow to Indian democracy” and said that the court had effectively bypassed an elected government “to give all the rights to the LG”. Singh added that the verdict goes “against everything that the SC had previously held in its Constitution Bench judgments with regard to the powers of the LG and the need for him to seek the aid and advice of the council of ministers before acting on any matter that does not directly concern the subjects of public order, land and police”.

The Rajya Sabha MP also said that his party would “seek legal opinion” on the judgment and explore the possibility of filing a review petition; asserting that the court’s ruling “is against the people of Delhi and the spirit of democracy”.

The BJP, of course, is jubilant.

'Blood on AAP's hands'

“We have always been saying that the AAP has no respect for the laws and the Constitution; it believes only in disruption and corruption. The LG had acted as per his powers but only because the decision did not suit Arvind Kejriwal, the AAP did not let the MCD function properly by not allowing the Standing Committee to be constituted... it is because of their arrogance that Delhi has turned into an open drain in this monsoon season... people have drowned inside coaching institutes; have you ever heard of such an incident anywhere else. The AAP has blood on its hands and I can only hope that after today’s judgment better sense will prevail on them and they will allow the MCD to function,” Vijender Gupta, leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, who served multiple terms as an MCD councillor and as chairman of the MCD Standing Committee in the past, told The Federal.

With Delhi scheduled for Assembly polls early next year, the apex court’s judgment is likely to act as added fuel for the ongoing war of supremacy between the AAP and the LG, who has often defied a previous Supreme Court judgment that had ordered the administrator against acting as an “obstructionist”.