The rocky road to legislative business in Delhi

The assembly held the task of building Delhi within the framework of its special status. The rules had to be different from all others as the national capital

In 1991, the 69th amendment to the Constitution turned Delhi into the National Capital Territory — not a full state, but more than Union territory (UT). The new assembly now held the task of building Delhi within the framework of its special status. The rules and procedures had to be different from all others as the national capital — something that nobody had prior experience of.

Lieutenant governor PK Dave addresses the budget session of the Delhi assembly on March 7, 1994 . (HT Archive)

So, with 70 elected representatives, Delhi set in motion its legislative journey from the Delhi metropolitan council, which was formed in 1966, to the legislative assembly in 1993. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the ruling party with 49 seats, and Congress the main opposition with 14 seats. The Janata Dal had four seats, while the remaining three legislators were Independents.

BJP’s Madan Lal Khurana was sworn in as the first chief minister of the reconstituted assembly and PK Dave the lieutenant governor (LG).

“The legislators were quite excited and reached the Secretariat in crisp white kurta-pyjamas, like children on the first day of school. Their conduct, however, was not as crisp as their kurtas...,” said SK Sharma, with a laugh.

Behind the path-breaking first day was an anguished and confused secretariat staff that had no idea what to do. Sharma said that there were no rules, no set seating arrangement, code of conduct, or any kind of proforma on how to begin the proceedings.

Sharma said that the first session did not even have an “order of business”, which is an agenda of what will be discussed, in sequence, on that day. This prompted Jag Pravesh Chandra, a Congress leader and the oldest elected MLA, also known at the time as the grand old man of Delhi politics, to take charge as pro-tem speaker and conduct the House on the lines of the metropolitan council that existed before this.

On the second day, Chandra again led a smooth transition to the first elected speaker, Charti Lal Goel, before taking on his position as the leader of Opposition in the house. Later, on December 17, Alok Singh was elected as the deputy speaker of the first assembly.

“Chandra led the oath-taking ceremony of all first-time members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) of Delhi. This was the first order of business on the first day of the assembly session on December 14, 1993. All the MLAs congratulated each other. And Khurana, the chief minister, kept 19 sittings of the first session, which in retrospect, was a colossal failure as nobody knew what to do for 19 days,” Sharma said.

The first day’s bonhomie gave to disagreements on the next — but issues were insignificant. Soon after the session convened for the day, the opposition members were on their feet protesting against the speaker not addressing Mahatma Gandhi as the “father of the nation” in his first press statement. Other issues on which the ruling side and opposition disagreed were why the agenda was published in Urdu, and why a portrait of BR Ambedkar was not put up in the assembly.

However, no member walked out of the House, with all matters being resolved amicably. The House witnessed the walkout on December 20 by the three independent MLAs who complained that they were not assigned a room in the assembly building, and not being allowed to raise their issues during the debate.

The remaining days of the session saw members discussing similar local issues ranging from electricity supply disruptions, broken roads, poor drinking water supply and lack of development work in slums.

This also highlighted the need for bringing in trained officials in parliamentary procedures, agenda making and preparing the paperwork.

Since police, land and public order were kept out of the domain of the elected government in Delhi, the agenda was dominated by financial matters such as taxes and allocations for the different schemes. “Procedures in Delhi were different because of the special status. So, there were issues that could not be part of the assembly’s business, such as law and order that were important in other states. So, issues related to taxes and other financial matters dominated the discussions,” said Omesh Saigal, who was the finance secretary during the first Assembly session, and later served as the chief secretary of Delhi from 1998 to 2000.

Jagdish Mukhi, who served as the finance minister in the Madal Lal Khurana cabinet, said there was confusion over several administrative matters due to the unique status of Delhi. “We could not even create a post of a peon,” he said, adding that they decided to raise the matter with the Central government (the Congress was in power then).

“The finance minister of Delhi could not impose any new tax or exempt any tax. We could not even create the post of a peon. There were eight such powers with state finance ministers that Delhi didn’t have. We discussed this with the Union finance minister at that time, Manmohan Singh. We held six meetings over eight months, and finally got all those powers,” said Mukhi.

“Our role as ministers in the Delhi government was to pursue issues with the Centre and not agitate, which got things done. We make a mistake when we compare the Delhi legislative assembly with that of other states. Delhi is a UT with special powers, and should be compared with other UTs. This is what we kept in mind even in the initial years, when we discussed important issues with the Centre and came to agreements,” said Mukhi, hinting at the tussle between the current Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi and the BJP at the Centre.

The first assembly decided that, from December 21, all sessions would begin at 2pm (similar to Britain’s House of Commons) — a practice that continues till date. Delhi is probably the only assembly in the country that meets only for around three hours daily while in session.

The business advisory committee of the House, while discussing what the first bill to be tabled in the House would be, decided that Delhi will impose a complete ban on cow slaughter in Delhi. “There were objections, initially, and the Centre also didn’t approve it, but it was later pursued and approved by the Centre.” Mukhi said.