The central government has recommended that the boundaries of Delhi’s revenue districts be made co-terminus with those of the municipal zones to improve administration and ease of governance.
Officials said government is also contemplating strengthening the positions of the district magistrates, with officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi zones, as well as health, education and social welfare departments, reporting to them for a unified command.
Each district will also have a mini secretariat where field officials of all departments will have offices to help people avoid having to run from one building to another for work involving multiple departments.
Lieutenant governor VK Saxena and chief minister Rekha Gupta held a meeting at Raj Niwas on Friday along with the ministers and senior bureaucrats to review the progress of steps taken to promote ‘ease of living’ and ‘ease of doing business’ in Delhi.
The capital is divided into 11 revenue districts, while MCD has 12 zones, besides the New Delhi Municipal Council and Delhi Cantonment Board. The Centre pointed out that this has led to a situation where most revenue districts have the areas of 2-3 municipal zones, withone even having small pockets of eight MCD zones.
Similarly, all MCD zones comprise areas from 2-3 revenue districts, causing a “jurisdictional confusion.” Sources said the Centre has recommended an equal number of MCD zones and revenue districts with co-terminus boundaries and NDMC and Delhi Cantt included in New Delhi district.
CM also suggested that the boundaries of police districts be made co-terminus with revenue districts and MCD zones, but this may need the approval of the Union home ministry. The changes in revenue districts and MCD zones can be done by Delhi government itself.
According to officials, CM also directed the chief secretary to explore the possibility of creating unified office complexes for all departments in each district to benefit the people.
They added that Gupta suggested that DMs be given more control over the functioning of various departments in their respective areas, with district-level officers of social welfare, health, public works, education, irrigation and flood control, women and child development, and transport, etc., reporting to them.
All the district-level officers will be provided offices in the mini-secretariats across the capital’s revenue districts to bring governance closer to the people and improve access to public services. This will reduce the need for residents to visit different locations for different services.
According to Raj Niwas officials, the meeting was essentially called to rationalise and simplify the licensing regime, ending the duplication of processes, creating a unified database of commercial establishments, and bringing multiple agencies together on a single platform to make the licensing processes simpler and thus establish Delhi as a favoured destination for investment.
“It was brought out in the meeting that fragmented databases, multiple licensing authorities, absence of a unified portal for all kinds of licenses, and complicated license fee structure as it exists today, led to revenue loss and also harassment of applicants and corruption,” said an official.
Officials added that LG expressed satisfaction at the progress made so far and lauded Delhi government for its prompt action in doing away with several irrelevant procedures. CM directed the departments concerned to expedite the remaining works.
