The mayor presented the Corporation’s annual budget at the Council meeting on March 12, 2012, a meeting that I was able to observe. The meeting was interesting to watch because it showed the extent of partisanship and political posturing in the Council, and how few civic issues are seriously discussed.
The mayor started the meeting by speaking briefly about pressing civic issues like garbage being dumped in Pallikaranai and Kodungaiyur instead of being recycled, roads not being maintained properly, and street lights that were broken. His promised solution? The magical words: “Amma will take care of this.”
A reporter I spoke to from the New Indian Express told me that the budget is usually prepared by the mayor, Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner with inputs from the councillors. Before the budget items were read out, the councillors and the press were given a CD and a large book containing basic information about the budget. The mayor read out the items in the order given in the book . He gave an introduction to every item, but this introduction did not give me much knowledge about the context and relevance of the item being presented in the budget. The leader of the ADMK on the floor commented on the budget for ten minutes, and praised “Amma” for such an inclusive budget.
Meanwhile, the councillors and some reporters from the press were given a huge bag with a picture of the Ripon building which contained papers containing details of the budget. When the mayor announced that there will be a discussion on the budget after lunch, the councillors and the reporters from the press were shocked because these discussions usually happen after a week or two. During the lunch break, Mr. Subash Chandra Bose, a DMK councilor and the leader of the opposition, was surrounded by reporters who were interviewing about his take on the budget. He said that the presented budget was not very different from that which was prepared by the mayor last term, but he refused to answer any further questions from reporters.
In the post-lunch session, reporters were not allowed to bring their cameras for the discussion. As the mayor started the discussion, Mr. Subash Chandra Bose interrupted to say that having the discussion then was not right and went against the procedure. The mayor said that eighteen councillors would get a chance to speak and critique the budget and that the DMK councillors would also get a turn to speak. The DMK councillors, agitated by this response from the mayor, walked out of the session. Then, the session continued without any distraction.
The mayor read out the names of the Councillors selected to speak that day. When their names were announced the councillors stood up and spoke. Surprisingly to me, every single ADMK councillor had the same thing to say: “We thank Amma for this excellent budget. We are very happy that the problems of our ward were considered while preparing the budget.” Only one or two councillors also complained that their ward be given more importance in the next budget. After this, the discussion ended and the Council was dismissed. The reporters ran off in a hurry to interview any Councillor they could catch hold of.
Observing the Budget session of the Council was extremely interesting. I was surprised by how little substantive discussion of the issues there was in the session. I was also surprised by how many of the interventions made by sitting councilors focused on praising the Chief Minister rather than speaking about issues relating to their ward, or problems they found with the budget or the budget making process. As a resident of Chennai, it was disappointing.
Transparent Chennai hopes to undercover more about the council and the budget, and more about how individual wards and ward councilors get money allocated for their ward’s problems in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more updates!
- Srinidhi Sampath Kumar
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>
To understand how the Chennai’s Council functions we have been reading up on the published Council reports- reading questions they asked, speeches they made and the discussions that took place. The second to last meeting of the present Council was held on August 29th, 2011 and we had the chance to attend it, and finally see and hear the people we had been reading about. As we stood at the entrance of the Ripon building, cars pulled up. Men in white and women in silk bustled up the stairs to the Council Chambers.
The meeting was chaired by Mayor Subrahmaniam. The monthly Council meetings are held at the Council Chambers near the Mayor’s office in the Ripon Building. The Mayor sits at the head of the room. To his right sits the Commissioner and on his left the Deputy Mayor. The Councilors sit according to their party. The benches in front of the Mayor are occupied by the ruling party in the city (DMK) on the right and the opposition party (AIADMK) on the left. There are two balconies on either side of the Council chambers; on the left is where the press is seated and on the right the recording equipment is kept. There are scribes who sit near the Mayor and take down the minutes of the meeting. Two scribes work at a time. This is used to compile the Proceedings Report of the Council meeting, which is published and sent to all Councilors.
The Council Secretary sits near the entrance of the Chamber. Councilors sign their attendance at the ledger there and collect the agenda for the meeting from him. The Agenda specifies the questions being asked at the meeting and the resolutions up for discussion. The Council Secretary is the head of the Council Department and is in charge of keeping attendance, preparing the agenda for every meeting and publishing the monthly reports.
The first 15 minutes of this meeting was chaotic as the CPI and the PMK members wanted to raise the issue of the High Court verdict on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The State government had passed a resolution that day where they asked for the death sentence of the 3 convicts to be turned to life imprisonment[1]. This led to loud arguments between the CPI and PMK on one side and the AIADMK on the other. The Mayor called for order and said that the issue was not a Council matter and so will not be discussed. If any one wanted to express their opinion on this issue, it could be done at the Legislative Assembly. At 12:00 p.m. the CPI and the PMK walked out to show their displeasure/staunch disagreement. But they walked back in at 12:15 p.m. A Councilor we talked to opined that the Mayor took such a stance so as to not go against the State government.
The first part of every Council meeting is the question hour. Unfortunately we missed this because we were obtaining permission from the Council Secretary to attend the meeting.
After the question hour, the following people were called upon to address the Council-
| Ward No. | Name of Councilor |
| 146 | Selvi Sounderaraj |
| 11 | K.Kripakaran |
| 63 | Prabakaran (ABSENT) |
| 61 | Mohammed Yasin (ABSENT) |
| 83 | Nagarajan |
| 39 | P.M.Kalyani |
| 3 | P. Jayanti |
| 154 | Meenakshi Venkatraman |
| 95 | R.Durai |
| 93 | Arunmozhi Seran |
| 102 | Balakrishnan |
| 74 | Ramesh |
| 116 | P.Ravi (Opposition leader) |
| 75 | N.Ramalingam (Ruling party leader) |
The Councilors use this time to address the Council about matters regarding their ward and city-related problems, as was done by Councilors P.Jayanti, Meenakshi Venkataraman and R.Durai. Party leaders P.Ravi and N.Ramalingam congratulated the Council on successful completion of their term.
The majority of the time at the Council meeting is spent on discussing resolutions. As the Mayor called out their names, the Councilors stood up to present their resolutions. Any resolution can be passed or implemented only with the approval of the Council. In this meeting, 64 resolutions were passed. Some councilors pass multiple resolutions; some resolutions are backed by multiple Councilors.
The reports that we read from the years 2007 and 2008 gave us a picture of chaotic Council sessions while the reports of the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 seemed more orderly. At the meeting we saw, the Council was in constant chaos. At any given time, half the Councilors are at the cafeteria adjacent to the Council chambers where they eat and talk with other Councilors. Councilors who are within the Chambers pay attention to the proceedings when it has to do with their ward, party or is of general importance. Often, while Councilors ask their questions, give their speeches or present their resolutions in a pre-decided order, there are several simultaneous mini-discussions going on. We saw one Councilor admonished and sent back to his seat by the Mayor for posing in front of the cameras with a paper.
Throughout the reports we have read there is very little mentioned of the Deputy Mayor Satyabama. At this meeting she was conspicuous in her silence. The meeting was attended by the Commissioner as well but he sat in only for the first half hour. He was later replaced by the Deputy Commissioner.
At the end of the speech session, the Mayor addressed the Council congratulating the Council on the good work done in this term and the last 10 years. He said that the within 20 days the date for the Council election would be announced. The last Council meeting will be held in September only to announce the placement of the ballot boxes. He thanked the Council for their cooperation and wished them luck for the election.
Following are the links to the media coverage on this meeting we could dig up-
CNN IBN via The Times of India
CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 1
CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 2
CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 3
Meryl Mary Sebastian
[1] The Hindu, ‘Tamil Nadu Assembly adopts resolution approving commutation of death sentence’, 30 Aug 2011. < http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2411347.ece>
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