Chennai: Councillors, not people, to elect Mayors in major cities

Chennai: People in Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai will no longer elect their mayors, their councillors will. This is an amendment proposed to the Tamil Nadu Municipal Corporation Laws (Amendment Act), 2016 that was introduced in the Assembly on Wednesday, amid opposition from DMK, which said it would oppose the bill.

“At present, elections to the municipal corporations are conducted on party basis. It has been brought to the notice of the government that councils of certain municipal corporations are not functioning properly since the mayor does not enjoy the support of the councillors. It is considered that if the mayor of a corporation enjoys the support of a majority of councillors, the councillors can function in a better manner,” minister for municipal administration and Rural Development S.P. Velumani said moving the bill in the Assembly.

“Therefore, the government has decided to elect a mayor of the corporation indirectly by councillors from among themselves. To give effect to the above decision, the government has decided to amend the law relating to the municipal corporations suitably,” he said. The bill says that accordingly amendments are proposed to various municipal corporation acts governing Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore. DMK MLA and former Chennai mayor M. Subramanian said that his party opposes the bill at the introductory stage itself.

Mr Velumani also moved two more bills – one to conduct the local body elections with the existing territorial area of divisions or wards in urban local bodies and the other in rural areas, due to difficulties in completing delimitation exercise in a short period of time to conduct the polls before October 24 this year.

The first Bill said commissioners of Municipal Corporations and Municipalities and Executive Officers of Town Panchayats carried out the delimitation exercise based on 2011 Census (‘figures of which were only received in 2013’).