High Court ordered a meeting between Centre, Delhi government and municipal corporations
New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court today directed that a meeting be held between the Centre, the AAP government and representatives of the municipal corporations in Delhi to find a solution to the financial difficulties being faced by the three MCDs.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan said the committee so constituted can look into the financial aspects of the corporations as well as the Delhi government which that claimed it has not received from the Centre over Rs 10,000 crore as its share of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection.
“We expect that this meeting shall be convened at the earliest,” the bench said and listed the matter for further hearing on September 8.
The order came on an application moved by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NrDMC) which has alleged that Rs 90.60 crore payable as grant-in-aid under the sanitation/urban development head, for the first quarter ending June 30, has not been released yet and Rs 181 crore under the same head for the second quarter is also due.
NrDMC has said that the funding was meant for payment of salaries of “safai karamchaaris” (sanitation workers) and sanitation activities.
The application has been filed in a pending writ petition by one Rahul Birla seeking directions to the Delhi government and the municipal corporations to pay the salaries with arrears of sanitation workers employed by them.
In its application, NrDMC has said that expenditure towards the salary till May 2020, sanitation services and providing PPE kits, gloves, masks, sanitizers to the workers has been incurred by the corporation from its own internal resources, in the absence of any amount being released by the Delhi government.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
