Three years after the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was trifurcated into regional civic bodies - North MCD, South MCD and East MCD - catering to smaller geographical areas, a return to the original set-up is on the cards.

The trifurcation experiment has clearly failed.

The MCD, which had been notorious for its inefficiencies, will be back as a unified entity if the Union government agrees to the proposal.

Problems within Delhi’s civic bodies have turned the city into a garbage pile

Instead of resolving complex civic issues, the trifurcation has added to the woes.

It has done little to ameliorate the plight of people other than giving the city three mayors and a completely avoidable added number of posts for the elected.

The BJP, which had earlier opposed the unification bid by the Congress, is surprisingly backing the move now.

The party has been ruling the civic bodies despite staying out of power in the Delhi assembly for more than 15 years.

With the MCD elections slated for 2017, it sees a major challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which stormed to power earlier this year.

The complete financial mess in the civic bodies recently led to a situation where sanitation workers went on a strike, turning the city into a garbage pile.

If better management was the goal behind trifurcation, then the idea has failed miserably.

The presence of several power centres has only made the Capital suffer.

Delhi needs an efficient civic body and one of the solutions could have been to expand the zonal network instead of creating new power centres.

The unification move might gather pace as even the AAP government, which has had several run-ins with the BJP-ruled MCD, supports the idea.

With more than 1.10 lakh employees, the MCD has huge financial burden. It has a salary backlog, which resulted in the recent strike.