Ambala Sadar zone to be removed from municipal corporation

AMBALA: Haryana state cabinet in its meeting on Tuesday approved to remove Ambala Sadar zone area from Ambala Municipal Corporation (MC) and register it under a new council. Meanwhile, 12 new villages would be added to the Ambala MC. The move to add new villages is being taken to as per the Haryana Municipal Corporation (HMC) Act, 1994, which states that it is mandatory for an MC to maintain a population of 3 lakh people.
An Ambala-based Punjab and Haryana high court advocate, Hemant Kumar, said, "Under Section 3(3) of the HMC Act, 1994, the government can add or remove areas. As per my understanding, the area removed comes under the state government. Under Section 3(5) of the HMC Act, 1994, there is no clear provision that the state government can constitute a municipal council for the area removed from the MC. It will be interesting to see if 12 new villages will be okay with the decision."
It is also worth highlighting that Sonipat municipal corporation elections, notified in July 2015, have not been conducted even after four years as most of the villages under its jurisdiction were not ready to come under it.
Apart from this, the tenure of the elected gram panchayat of included villages is also of five years and it is not legally valid to prematurely dissolve panchayats.
As per information, on January 23, the Haryana Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2018, was implemented. According the Act, the state government by just issuing a gazette notification can break any municipal corporation, completely dissolve it or announce it as a municipality or a council.
Hemant said he was extremely surprised why the government did not use its power of dissolving any MC under Section 3 (A) of the HMC (Amendment) Act 2008.
Another amendment made to the Haryana MC Act 1994 and Haryana Municipal Act 1973 is related to the population in MC areas of jurisdiction.
As per sources, the formula explained after the amendment says, "EP=PX(1+AGR/100)n where 'EP' refers to existing population; 'P' refers to the population defined in clause (45) of Section 2; 'AGR' refers to the annual growth rate in percent obtained from the last decennial census; 'n' refers to the number of years from the last decennial census year to the year in which the constitution of the corporation is being considered."
Hemant said, "There is a legal doubt on the provision made regarding the calculation of the existing population of any civic bodies' area by the Haryana government as under Article 243(P)(g) of the Constitution of India, "the population means: the population as ascertained at the last preceding census of which the relevant figures have been published.
The formula explained in the amendment of Section 3 of the Haryana MC Act 1994, which is explained under sub-section (2)(ii) of Section 3 to calculate the existing population, raises some doubts as it overrides the definition of the population in the Constitution of India."