Chandigarh, June 9: Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari has come out strongly in favour of a five-year term for the city’s Mayor, calling the current one-year tenure “a structurally failed model” that hampers effective governance and accountability.
Addressing reporters on Monday, Tewari announced his intention to include the proposal in a Private Member’s Bill that he plans to introduce in the Parliament in the near future.
“The current system does not fail the individual mayors, it fails the institution itself. One year is simply not enough time for any Mayor to implement long-term plans or create lasting change,” Tewari said.
He pointed out that since the inception of the Municipal Corporation in 1996, Chandigarh has had around 30 different mayors, which has created instability and diluted the continuity needed for sustained development.
Tewari said that while councillors serve a five-year term, there is no logical justification for limiting the Mayor’s term to just one year. He added that this discrepancy has led to a power imbalance between elected representatives and bureaucratic functionaries.
“This skewed power equation has created an insidious environment of power play where real authority often lies outside democratic accountability,” the Congress MP said.
He also emphasized the need for direct elections for the Mayor’s post and proposed that the Mayor should only be removable by a two-thirds majority vote among the councillors, in order to provide both autonomy and stability.
Senior Deputy Mayor Jasbir Singh Bunty echoed Tewari’s sentiments, calling the five-year tenure “critical for uninterrupted city development.” He said direct elections would enhance transparency and public trust in the office.
Tewari’s remarks also revive a 2018 proposal by a Cabinet Secretariat Committee comprising chief secretaries of Union Territories, which had recommended a five-year term for municipal mayors and opposed voting rights for nominated members. However, the Chandigarh UT Administration rejected both suggestions, stating that the issues would be taken up at the next Administrators’ Conference.
Tewari criticized the delay in acting on the committee’s recommendations, saying that meaningful reform must not be kept in abeyance under bureaucratic pretexts.
Tewari also pointed to the disparity in fund allocation, stating that while the Centre allocates Rs 5,800 crore to the Chandigarh Administration, only a fraction – around Rs 1,800 crore – goes to the Municipal Corporation, which shoulders major public responsibilities.
He stressed that unless both financial and functional autonomy is granted to the civic body, urban governance in Chandigarh will remain piecemeal and ineffective.
With his Private Member’s Bill in the pipeline, Tewari is now urging consensus across party lines for a long-term structural change to strengthen local self-governance in the Union Territory.
