NEW DELHI: Bihar's capital Patna's annual revenue collection is just enough to pay only one-third of the total salary bill of its municipal employees. Other big cities like Kanpur, Ranchi, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Ludhiana also do not earn enough to pay the salaries of their employees, forget about having any own fund to undertake development works or improving services.

These are some of the findings of a survey of 21 big municipal corporations by advocacy group Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (JCCD). These cities not only depend highly on financial support from states for development work and services, but they also use the earmarked fund to pay salaries to their employees.

According JCCD’s fourth annual survey on Ïndia’s City Systems, the salary component of employees of Patna Municipal Corporation is 320% more than its own total earnings. In the other five cities mentioned in this report, which fall in this category, the salary expense is in the range of 128-199% of the total income of the municipalities.

The number of such municipalities is much more considering the fact that there are several reports of how salary disbursement to municipal employees in different cities usually get delayed.

The findings are out at a time when the Central government is pushing for building smart cities involving municipal bodies. The report has also ranked cities based on governance parameters in which Thiruvananthapuram has scored the maximum.

The survey shows how relatively smaller cities have weak finances and therefore can’t make future investments for infrastructure and services. For example, the annual total expenditure of Greater Mumbai municipal body is about Rs 33,000 crore for 12.4 million people. Almost similar amount is spent annually by the next 10 populous cities including Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune, Lucknow, Bangalore and Chennai, which have a total population of 54.4 million.

The report also exposes how none of the 21 cities it surveyed have effective policies to stop violations of planning norms, which is evident from the mushrooming of slums, unauthorized colonies and illegal constructions. All cities scored “zero” on this parameter as compared to 9.1 to 10 for London and New York. It mentions how a survey conducted by Bangalore Municipal Corporation in 2014 found only three out of 400 buildings conformed to rules.

According to the report, the average tenure of municipal commissioners or CEOs in the past five years across these cities was 1.2 to 1.6 years. Similarly, the tenure of Mayors was 3.1 to 4.5 years.

On Tuesday, the urban development ministry asked states to have municipal cadre and recruit people who are professionally qualified and this should be on merit. It also asked for allowing lateral entry of experts and professionals for specific posts and for a specified contract period in their bid to “professionalization of municipal cadre” in the states.

