Urban Local Government: The Municipalities

In one line

Part IXA does for towns and cities what Part IX does for villages: it makes elected municipal bodies a constitutional requirement instead of a State-law convenience, fixes their term, reserves seats in them, and gives them a list of subjects to be entrusted with.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act 1992 inserted Part IXA, articles 243P to 243ZG, with effect from 1 June 1993. Article 243Q requires three kinds of body according to the size of the urban area, a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area and a Municipal Corporation for a larger one. Article 243R fills the seats by direct election from wards. Article 243S requires Wards Committees where the population is three lakhs or more. Article 243T reserves seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and, to the extent of not less than one third, for women. Article 243U gives a five-year term. Article 243W allows devolution of the eighteen matters in the Twelfth Schedule. Articles 243ZD and 243ZE require District and Metropolitan Planning Committees, and article 243ZG bars the courts from electoral matters except by election petition.

Why the law has this at all

The reasons are the reasons for Part IX, and the two Amendments were passed together. Municipal bodies existed under State statutes; elections to them were postponed at pleasure, they were superseded for years at a time, weaker sections were unrepresented, and they had neither functions nor money of their own.

Two things are peculiar to the urban side. A city is not one thing: a town of forty thousand and a metropolis of twelve million cannot be governed by the same institution, so article 243Q creates a graded set of bodies. And urban government is mostly planning, which does not respect a municipal boundary. That is why Part IXA ends with two articles about committees, article 243ZD and article 243ZE, that exist to make one plan out of many local ones.

Part IXA, article by article

Article 243P, definitions. A "Metropolitan area" means an area "having a population of ten lakhs or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas", specified as such by the Governor. A "Municipality" means an institution of self-government constituted under article 243Q, and a "Committee" means a Committee constituted under article 243S.

Article 243Q, the three kinds of body. There shall be constituted in every State a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, "that is to say, an area in transition from a rural area to an urban area"; a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area; and a Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area. Which is which the Governor specifies by public notification, having regard to population, density, revenue, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities and economic importance. The proviso lets the Governor declare an area an industrial township where an industrial establishment provides the municipal services, and then no Municipality need be constituted there.