For delhi statehood puducherry merger

For delhi statehood puducherry merger

UTs’ troubles call for a democratic solution.

Two Union territories are in the news for institutional tussles between the central government and the elected legislature, Delhi and Puducherry. A Supreme Court bench has been unable to agree on the limits of the Delhi government’s powers and the Lt Governor of Puducherry and the head of its elected legislature see eye-to-eye rarely, leading to a virtual blockade of the Lt Governor’s place by the so-called chief minister and his supporters. This situation calls for an institutional solution. In the case of Delhi, an area comprising the regions governed by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), must be carved out and placed under the direct rule of the Centre, administered through a divisional magistrate. The rest of Delhi must gain the status of a full-fledged state. Puducherry should be dissolved, and its constituent districts merged in the different states in which they are located.

Delhi’s population is some 16.4 million. That makes it bigger than as many as 164 nations, bigger than Zimbabwe or Senegal in Africa, Cambodia or Azerbaijan in Asia, Portugal or Hungary in Europe and Cuba or Haiti in Latin America. Why should so many people be deprived of the full rights of representative government, in which their elected political executive can be held to account for law and order, any branch of administration and public service? The Centre needs to directly control only the patch around the seat of the central government. The NDMC area comprises some 47 sq km out of Delhi’s 1,480 sq km.

Puducherry continues as a Union territory because of its French colonial past. Its 12 lakh residents deserve a democratic government, not the whims of a Lt Governor. Its constituent regions — Mahé, located in Kerala, Yanam in Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry and Karaikal, in Tamil Nadu — could be merged with the surrounding states, after consulting the residents’ wishes. The people can, of course, continue with French language and culinary traditions. If the French so much as mutter an objection, the treaty of cession, a remnant of colonialism, should be rescinded, unilaterally.