Hyderabad: The role of corporators has lost relevance in the current democratic set-up. Corporators, in order to learn about public grievances, have to form ward committees and conduct meetings once in two weeks. Surprisingly, ever since the formation of ward committees, corporators have only held one meeting and that too for the swearing in ceremony of members.
Losing faith in them, citizens have been presenting their grievances directly to top political bosses and bureaucrats through various social media platforms. Citizens claimed that thou-gh the role of corporators was clearly defined in the constitution, it was becau-se of corrupt leaders that the system had collapsed. Surprisingly, educated people do not even know the name of their corporators.
Dr V.B.J. Rao Chelikani, president, UFERWAS (Uni-ted Federation of Residents Welfare Associations) said that a corporator would represent about one lakh population in his ward. He said that since it would be extremely difficult to learn about grievances from the residents, there was a facility to form ward committees in the constitution, with 10 members representing people from different strata of society.
He said of the 10 members, two would be nominated from registered resident welfare associations (RWAs), and in the event of non-availability of RWA members, a member of registered tax payers, rate payers association, two members from slum development federation or representative of the senior-most self help group in the ward.
Mr Rao said corporators had the power of nomination, therefore rather than nominating members from the civil society they elected henchmen to indulge in irregularities. Against this backdrop, he said, the residents had lost faith in the corporators and were relying on social media to resolve their grievances. “Social media has been a boon for individual liberty, since some sections of the media has also become corrupt and is not reflecting the actual problems of the residents in the city. Citizens of late have been relying on social media, where they can directly post their issues to top bureaucrats and politicians, who can resolve their grievances,” he said.
Mr Rao also said that the corporators had also been bringing in dangerous trends by not contacting citizens living in apartments, gated communities, intellectuals, middle class and the educated fearing that they would question them for not attending to public grievances. He said that the corporators had been targeting the low income groups and people living in slums by assuring them with false promises of roads, 2BHK houses and schools to mint votes from them. Mr Rao said that the corporators themselves had been creating gaps between people rather than uniting them. He was of the opinion that the role of the corporator had become irrelevant in the current scenario. “Surprisingly educated, middle class and intellectual groups do not know the names of the corporators in their respective wards,” he added.
Mr M. Padmanabha Reddy secretary of Forum for Good Governance (FGG) said that even though the corporator set up was a strong institution in demo-cracy, it had been paralysed by the corrupt netas.
He also said that a corporator had to nominate ward committee members from civil society and hold meetings every fortnightly to learn grievances and resolve them. However, none of the corporators held a meeting to learn about public grievances, however they did hold one after forming ward committees, which was a swearing ceremony.
