With hundreds of crores in allocated funds lying unspent, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s defunct Mohalla Sabha project got a push on Wednesday with MLAs asking Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal to approve the programme.
One of the AAP’s main poll promises, the Mohalla Sabhas were meant to decentralise governance by giving residents of an area the power to prioritise development works.
While 11 Mohalla Sabhas were started under a pilot project in 2015, the AAP government approved the formation of 2,972 such bodies for all 70 Assembly constituencies in 2016. However, that was stopped by the then Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung.
‘Will approach L-G’
On Wednesday, AAP MLAs initiated a discussion on Mohalla Sabhas, leading Urban Development Minister Satyendar Jain to declare that the government would request Mr. Baijal to clear the proposal.
Mr. Jain said that ₹350 crore allocated for the bodies in 2016-17 are lying unused. He added that the government envisioned one Mohalla Sabha for every 1,000 homes.
Tilak Nagar MLA Jarnail Singh, whose Assembly constituency was part of the pilot project, said that when the Mohalla Sabha was functional, about 100 development works out of 222 recommended by residents had been completed. After that, he said, the work stopped due to the L-G’s orders.
The Opposition, however, said that the AAP government was trying to blame the L-G for its own “failures”. “The government has yet to formulate a framework and the micro-level plan for how these Mohalla Sabhas will work,” said Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta.