To legislate the Swaraj Act to devolve power directly to the people giving power of decision-making to the communities

By  Vrashali Khandelwal

In November 2015, Delhi Government had completed the draft of the Delhi Swaraj Bill, which aimed to constitute Mohalla Samitis and provide funds to local bodies. However, the bill has not been tabled in Delhi Legislative Assembly by the government till date. 

However, the government attempted to implement the same promise through an executive action and a cabinet decision was taken to set up ‘Mission Swaraj’, a state level project management unit and also constituted Mohalla Samitis. The Mohalla Samitis were also empowered to oversight the utilization of C-LAD fund (which is the MLA fund). Mohalla Samitis were constituted in about 2972 wards in June 2016 and as of February 2018, more than 60 works have been completed through CLAD fund.3 The Mission Swaraj proposal was not approved by the Lieutenant Governor for nearly 2.5 years. Thereafter, an advertisement to hire the necessary people for the Mission Swaraj was issued in January 2019. 

Further, in a move to strengthen the decision-making based on local problems, Delhi Government hiked MLA-LAD fund to 10 crore rupees, the highest in the country and twice the MP-LAD fund. Thousands of works have been completed using this fund. 

Clearly, three conclusions can be drawn.

-The government did not take the legislative route contrary to the promise

-The LG Office stalled the government efforts for almost half the tenure when it made an attempt through executive action.

-The government made several efforts, but they were better versions of the existing provisions not directly aligned with the promise.

Hence, the performance of the government is considered “Inadequate Progress”.