(This story originally appeared in on Feb 06, 2015)

NEW DELHI: The business end of governance in Delhi is its three municipal corporations . They control the nuts and bolts of life—from dispensaries to roads and lanes, from garbage disposal to clearing building plans, and of course, various taxes. Most Delhiites see the municipal corporation as a blundering bureaucracy steeped in corruption and nepotism. A glimpse of this is revealed in statutory internal audit documents of the three corporations for 2011-12, the latest available publicly.Separate audit reports for the three corporations show aggregate financial irregularities amounting to a whopping Rs 244 crore in the audit year. Besides this, the auditors found Rs 1.42 crore worth of payments without vouchers or stamped receipts. The nature of irregularities discovered is shocking and, in some cases, heart-wrenching.MCD was trifurcated in 2012 to form North, South and East corporations. The internal audit reports have been accordingly separated. BJP has been ruling the municipal bodies since 2007. Before that, after its restructuring in 1997, BJP won in 1997, but lost to Congress in 2002. The bitter experiences of Delhiites with the municipal bodies could well be contributing to their disaffection with BJP in the current assembly elections.The audit reports contain dozens of matters of irregularity. In one case, textbooks for classes I to V worth Rs 1.3 lakh were found to be issued from a corporation store in Meetha Kuan for a primary school in Azadpur. When the auditors made enquiries at the school, the principal said that they had not received any books for free distribution.Pension contributions of employees worth over Rs 30 crore were not deposited at the designated bank by the officials. Neither was the matching employers' contribution. When finally the scam was caught over Rs 4.8 crore worth of interest that would have accrued, had to be paid up by the corporation.In a shocking case, dishonoured cheques worth over Rs 55 crore issued by 70 parties were discovered in the advertisement & theatre department with no action being envisaged. These cheques were taken as payment for advertisement space even though rules expressly forbid cheque payment. The officials were not even maintaining a record of dishonoured cheques.The internal audit report is rife with such cases. But each of the three reports ends with a disappointing note. The auditors give a complete record of the number of times they have raised objections in the past 50 years for which no clarification or corrective measure has been taken.The North Corporation has 3,615 audit objections and 33,225 observations going back to 1958 that have yet not been addressed by the officials. The South DMC has 2,399 objections and 22,942 observations that remain unanswered since 1964. And, the East DMC has 1,238 objections and 11,393 observations that are outstanding since 1970-71.It is small wonder that the people of Delhi are fed up with these bodies.