For the first time since its very inception in the early 1970s, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) will be headed by a member of the political executive instead of a bureaucrat.
Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal has given his nod for the appointment of Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot as the Chairman of the DTC Board.
The file pertaining to the appointment is, according to sources in the government, currently being reviewed at the office of Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash and is expected to be formalised early next week.
Cong. questions move
Former Delhi Transport Minster and Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken questioned the move.
“The appointment of a Minister to head an autonomous body such as the DTC Board will interfere in its independent functioning,” he said.
Mr. Maken pointed out that the last political appointee to be put at the helm of the public transport entity was Congress MP from Sadar Bazar Amar Nath Chawla. According to his bio-profile in the records of the Lok Sabha, Mr. Chawla was chairman of the Delhi Transport Committee in 1963-64.
Mr. Gahlot’s proposed appointment, which government sources argued was being made to ensure a “hands-on approach”, will materialise at a time when the public transporter is hemmed in from various quarters in relation to matters ranging from the unsuccessful procurement of more buses to helming the creation of arguably the largest fleet of electric buses in the world.
Chief to be demoted
Since the Board of a government body cannot have two chairmen, sources in the government pointed out, the move will, in effect, entail a demotion for the current Chief Managing Director (CMD) of the DTC, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Manoj Kumar, who will be re-designated as Managing Director (MD).
“Two orders will be brought out to formalise the appointment of Mr. Gahlot: one from the Transport Department designating him as Chairman of the DTC and another from the Services Department re-designating Mr. Kumar as MD, DTC,” a government source said.
Other departments
In the midst of the continuing tussle between bureaucrats and members of the bureaucracy which came irrevocably to the fore after an alleged assault on Mr. Prakash by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators in the presence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at his residence on February 19-20, the DTC Board will become the third such body to be helmed by a Minister.
The others include the functioning of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia as the Chairman of the Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation Limited (DTTDC) and that of Delhi Industries Minister Satyendar Jain as the chairperson-cum-managing director of the Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (DSIIDC).