What is a Municipal Act?
/In the previous article, The Constitution and the 74th CAA, we looked at the landmark 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA), 1992. This amendment not only gave constitutional recognition to the local urban governments, but also instituted mandatory changes such as State Finance Commissions, reservations for municipal elections, and ward committees.
While the 74th CAA brought in all these changes, it was left to the state legislatures to make up state specific rules. Thus, respective state municipal acts govern the urban local governments within each state. These acts give provisions for setting up local governments on the basis of criteria like population size, density, economic profile etc.
What is a Municipal Act?
Municipal Acts are legislations brought about by state governments to establish municipal governments, administer them, and provide a framework of governance for cities within the state. Various processes including rules for elections, recruitment of staff, and demarcation of urban areas derive from the state municipal acts.
Municipal acts existed in India before the introduction of the 74th CAA, but the Constitution did not mandate the creation of local governments. The responsibility of local governance was placed under state governments through the State List. The 74th CAA addressed these concerns by mandating the formation of local governments and the creation of institutions such as the State Finance Commission and State Election Commission.
It added the 12th Schedule which provided a list of 18 functions that were to be the responsibilities of the local governments. ‘Local governance’ however remained a part of the State list, thereby providing state governments the discretionary power to devolve these functions to city governments. Our article ‘What do city governments do?’ explains more regarding the functions of the city government.
As a result of the 74th CAA, the state governments amended their existing municipal acts or instituted newer ones, to reflect the changes introduced. For example, the much celebrated People’s Plan Campaign in Kerala that decentralised the planning decisions to the local level has its origin in the post-74th CAA Kerala Municipalities Act, 1994 which conferred increased planning powers to the municipal governments.
In Uttar Pradesh, the 74th CAA was implemented through amendments introduced by the Uttar Pradesh Local Self Government Laws (Amendment) (UPLSGL) Act, 1994. Before the enactment of the UPLSGL Act, 1994, there were five categories of municipal governments in the state, which were changed into three post74th CAA. This was done in accordance with the provision 243Q of the 74th CAA which constituted three kinds of municipalities as institutions of self-governance.
Pre-74th CAA:
Nagar Maha Palika
City Board
Nagar Palika
Notified Area Committee
Town Area Committee
Post 74th CAA
Nagar Nigam/Municipal Corporation
Nagar Palika Parishad/Municipal Board
Nagar Panchayat/Town Panchayat
Hence, the respective state’s municipal act is the administering document for municipal governments but it follows the guiding principles in the 74th CAA. Below, we shall look at the number of municipal acts in the country in more detail.
This piece is part of the Governance Series of the Nagrikal. Nagrikal is a platform for citizens from small cities to share their experiences so that they be channeled into policies.
Articles in the Governance Series
