Though the Ward Councilors and the Chennai Corporation or the ‘Ripon Building’ they represent are prominent enough, information about their duties, or records of their actions are either a hassle to access or are hardly publicized. Though some information has been voluntarily published, it has not been put across widely enough, or in a form which can be easily processed. One example is the Resolutions passed at the monthly Council Meetings, whose copies have been published online (in Tamil) since July 2007 on the Chennai Corporation Website.[1]

These resolutions are plans of action or solutions to grievances pertaining either to individual wards, a group of wards or the whole of Chennai Corporation. They form the bulk of the Councilor’s active involvement in local area development. Decisions relating to the construction or demolition of buildings, implementation of laws which have been passed, processing of schemes which have been suggested and changes in officials or position designations are just a few of the plethora of resolutions passed monthly. A rough translation of the latest set of Resolutions, passed at the Council Meeting dated 31/01/2011, has been put up on the Transparent Chennai site’s data page about Municipal Councilors. (Type Resolutions in the search bar once you click on this link)[2]

The process of passing a resolution begins at the Ward Committee level, where individual Councilors may present concerns about the needs of his Ward or the status of Municipal Works in the area. At the next stage, the Commissioner and the relevant Standing Committees approve the resolutions, which have already been approved by the Ward Committee, unless they are cancelled by the State Government.[3] As directed in the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act 1919, there are 6 Standing Committees, namely Accounts, Public Health, Works, Taxation and Finance, Education and Town Planning.[4] These Standing Committees are to meet at least a month, and consist of 15 members elected by the Council.

At the final stage, they are discussed at the monthly Council Meetings convened by the Mayor in the presence of other Ward Councilors. If a resolution or order passed by the Council goes against any provision in any Act, by-law, rule or notification or is unjust, the Commissioner may then refer the issue to the State Government.[5] Once it is passed, it is the Commissioner’s and relevant departments’ responsibility to ensure it is carried out. This order of proceedings, which has been directed by the Chennai Municipal Corporation Act 1919, can be seen in the Dates of the Commissioner’s Entry, Standing Committee Meetings and Council Meetings.[6]

From viewing the copies available online, the resolutions appear to have been quite clearly written, with most containing a brief explanation of the issue, descriptions of related issues and officials, a brief timeline of progress, and Ward and Zone details where relevant. The set of resolutions pertaining to a specific project or scheme can give us comprehensive information about it and often, the stage it is or is supposed to be at.

Data presentation prevents accountability

However, it is only in some cases that the details of who actually pushed the resolution are given, making it difficult to judge who is more involved or less involved in promoting works either in their own wards or the city. Also, we observed discrepancies in the dates of the Council meetings at which the resolutions were passed; resolutions passed on certain months are missing, as seen in the ordered list of resolutions presented online available here[7], leaving a lot more to be desired in the attempts to make these public releases more accessible and visible.

Though the raw information itself is quite accessible, the extraction of relevant data proves to be a real task.  Obtaining information specifically relevant to a member of a ward or an employee of a department or organization is difficult. Unless specific information about when a specific resolution was passed is at hand or unless sections of the report relevant to certain Ward Councilors have been extracted and kept at their offices, (as a Councilor we spoke to claimed he did), looking for a particular piece of information means manually sifting through yearly reports (which have all been published only in Tamil) to obtain the required information, a mammoth task.

This leaves us to question: Even though the council resolutions are published online, without this information being as accessible, searchable, and comprehensible as it could be, is the Council truly accountable to the public?

Charumathi Raja, summer intern for Transparent Chennai, 2nd year Economics student at the University of Warwick, UK

[1] http://www.chennaicorporation.gov.in/mayor/CMSPages.do?do=councilResolutionsList

[2] Excel Workbook of Rough Translations of Resolutions, as passed at the Council Meeting dated 31/01/2011(Sheet 1)

[3] Corporation of Chennai, “The Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919.”, Chapter 2, The Several Authorities

[4] Corporation of Chennai, “The Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919.”, Chapter 2, The Municipal Authorities of the Corporation.

[5] Corporation of Chennai. “The Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919.” Chapter II, 23.Functions of council.

[6] Excel Workbook of Rough Translations of Resolutions, as passed at the Council Meeting dated 31/01/2011(Sheet 1)

[7] Excel Workbook of Resolutions Available Online (Sheet 2)

As the Municipal elections draw closer and we try to find ways to analyze the performance of the Councilors, let us first assess the data that is at hand and its ability to provide a nuanced analysis of a Councilor’s performance. Transparent Chennai collected information through RTI applications and personal visits to the Chennai Corporation.

We filed RTIs at individual Zonal Offices to their Public Information Officers, the Executive Engineers, to get data on attendance and minutes of Ward Committee meetings and the Councilor-wise expenditure from their Ward Improvement Works Fund. At the Corporation, we approached the Council Department to obtain Council Proceedings Official Report for data on attendance, questions asked and speeches made at the Council meetings. This data was translated from Tamil and manually tabulated for every Council meeting from 2007 to 2011.

Data Collected

-          Attendance at Ward Committee and Council meetings held between 2007-11

-          Questions asked and Speeches made at these Council meetings

-          Resolutions passed by the Council

-          Expenditure from the Councilor Ward Improvement Works Fund

From the mountain of raw data collected, we filled spreadsheet after spreadsheet with information, neatly formatted and beautiful to look at . Our aim was to organize and analyse this data to understand the performance of individual Councilors during their term of 5 years. But a closer look revealed that not everything was flawless.

Analysis of Collected Data-

Questions and Speeches: May not be the best measure of performance

There are around 15 questions asked and 15 speeches made by Councilors in pre-decided order at every Council meeting. The questions asked and speeches made at the Council depend on the allotment provided by the Council department to various political parties on the basis of their strength in the Council and hence, cannot be completely indicative of the Councilor’s own efforts to represent his/her ward at the Council.

Councilor Ward Development Scheme: Incomplete information for accountability

The information about Councilors Ward Improvement Works expenditure tells us how much a Councilor has spent to develop his/her ward but we cannot assess the quality of this expenditure because details of spending were not made available to us even after an RtI request. Moreover, we heard informally that proposed expenditures from certain Council members were blocked because of their party affiliation, so the spending does not always correlate well with the performance of the Councilor.

Resolutions: Incomplete information for accountability

Resolutions are an important measure of the work done by a Councilor. Overlapping data on attendance of Councilors with the number of resolutions they have passed can help us understand whether attendance at these meetings is in any way reflective of the work they do. The resolutions passed at the Council are put up on the Chennai Corporation website. However, the information on this website is not complete. There are several months of resolutions missing. Many of the resolutions available on the website have been wrongly labelled. These gaps in data are difficult to discern from the website unless you are privy to the dates of the past meetings and the number of resolutions passed in each.

Even when these gaps are filled, the resolutions information is kept in such a manner that every resolution cannot be attributed to a single ward or Councilor, making it less useful for understanding an individual Councilor’s performance.

Attendance: May not directly reflect performance

Good attendance at Council is important, but it does not necessarily mean that councillors are active. In our RTIs to the Zonal offices we asked for the minutes of the Ward Committee meetings. Only Zone 6 responded to this request by emailing us the soft copy of their Ward Committee meetings minutes. The minutes contained information on the resolutions put forward by Councilors in each meeting, from 2007 to 2011.

From the minutes of the Zone 6 Ward Committee, we find that while all the Councilors have attended every meeting of the Ward Committee between 2007 and 2011, there is extreme variation in the number of resolutions they have put forward. Almost all the Councilors have presented 5 or more resolutions excepting Ward 92 which had only one and Ward 87 which presented none. Ward 91 and Ward 95 have been very active with 25 and 21 each. Ward 94 has been present at every Council meeting from January 2007 to May 2011 but has passed only 5 resolutions during the same period.

Our assumption that collecting data would be a difficult was not wrong, but it wasn’t the only stumbling block. Attendance, funds and resolutions are the just the first step to understanding and assessing Councilor performance, but each piece of data has its limitations.

Meryl Mary Sebastian

Transparent Chennai has started a project on Electoral Accountability where we seek to understand what our elected representatives do, how we can measure their performance and hold them accountable. In the weeks leading up to the Council elections that will be held in October, we will be putting out information on what our local government does and how they function. In this regard, we are starting a blogpost series Chennai Council Elections. Below is the first post in this series:

According to the Chennai Municipal Corporation Act, 1919, a Councilor can bring to notice of the proper authority the neglect of municipal work, wastage of municipal property, communicate the needs of his ward and suggest improvements. A Councilor has access to the records of the Corporation and can peruse them giving due notice to the Commissioner. Councilors can also be held liable for loss or wastage of money or property of the Corporation caused by them.

From talking to a Ward Councilor one understands that they, informally, interact with their constituents and use meetings at the Ward Committee and the Council to give voice to their needs. Requests by the Councilor that are approved at the Ward Committee meetings are presented at the Council meetings and result in resolutions. The Council Department says that around 100-150 resolutions are passed at the Council meetings that are usually held once a month.

In the murky waters of what a Councilor can or cannot do, there is one clear responsibility they can carry out- the utilization of funds provided to them under the Councilor Ward Development Scheme. Every year, each Councillor gets a specific sum to use for the development of his ward. The funds come to the Corporation from the State Government. When a Councillor wants to use these funds, he suggests a work that needs to be done within his ward like road improvement, he tells the Junior Engineer to prepare a plan and draw up an estimate. This is then taken up to the Assistant Commissioner for approval. On receiving his sanction it goes to the concerned department in the Corporation, a tender is called for and the contract is given out. The funds are released directly to the contractor by the Assistant Commissioner at the Zone.

Now, this should be good news. But how are they spending this money? Are they spending at all? An RTI filed by Transparent Chennai shows that during the year 2007-08, from the total allotment of Rs.1085 lakh 70% was used. The allotment for each Councilor was Rs.7 lakh. When in 2008-09 the allotment increased to Rs.15 lakh per Councilor, the percentage of total expenditure fell to 63.5%. With the increase in allotment to Rs.25 lakh in 2009-2010, the spending fell further to 40.6%. It increased to 62.74% in 2010-2011. Were the elections slated for October 2011[1] an incentive?

More pitiful are the figures of the Mayor Special Development Fund, only using Rs. 18.36 lakh in 2007-08 and Rs.12.62 lakh in 2008-09 out of the allotted Rs.50 lakh. Following the downward trend, in 2009-2010, when the allotment increased to Rs.200 lakh spending plummeted to a miserable Rs.9.71 lakh.  No figure was given for 2010-2011.

- Meryl Mary Sebastian

[1] Mariappan, Julie; Poll fever continues; local body elections slated for October, The Hindu, 29 April 2011. < http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-29/chennai/29486803_1_local-body-polls-assembly-polls-poll-fever>