Maharashtra CM punts for municipal elections, urban reform

It may not be grabbing national headlines, but Maharashtra too is in election mode. On February 7, we saw Zila Parishad and some Panchayat Samiti elections being held, and now the state is gearing up for 10 municipal corporation elections on February 16.

Leading the charge for the Congress here is state Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavan. He spent just about over a year in this job. CNBC-TV18's Anuradha SenGupta catches up with him to find out if cities like Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik, Kalyan, Thane, to name just a few, will vote the Congress and thereby endorse the state government's administration.

Below is an edited transcript of his interview on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: How confident are you that these corporation results will go the Congress way?

A: It is a very interesting scenario in Maharashtra. 46% of people in Maharashtra live in cities. We just had the municipal council elections for 195 municipal councils. The Congress and NCP have done exceedingly well. We pushed Shiv Sena and BJP way back in the tier 2 cities municipal council elections. Now we just finished polling for the 27th Zilla Parishad, district councils and voting for 10 corporations. Hence, it is equally important that we win cities. It is a popular myth that cities have voted for BJP and communal parties although it is a fact in Maharashtra. However, it was more to do with local organizations and the division of secular votes. Thus when I analyse the situation as we went in elections, I realized that it is only because of the division of secular votes between NCP and Congress. This division is avoided in Lok Sabha and assembly time whereas; we fight against each other in local bodies.

Q: This pre-poll alliance that you have with the NCP in certain municipal corporations will help the Congress achieve what it couldn't in the previous election. 17 years of rule in Mumbai for instance of the BJP- Shiv Sena.

A: That is the idea.  In 2007 the Congress and NCP seriously tried to form an alliance and the division of seats were also finalized. 65 seats were to be contested by NCP and the remaining out of 227 were to be contested by Congress. But...

Q: It didn't go through.

A: But in the last minute on one seat, the alliance broke. If you add up the votes obtained by Congress and NCP, we could have easily swept the polls. We could have been ahead in 132 segments and we need only 114 for a majority. But that couldn't happen last time. So this time both leaders decided together. I talked to Sharad Pawar. I talked to the NCP leaders and we both felt that it was necessary that we remove BJP, Shiv Sena and the communal parties from Maharashtra politics. Maharashtra swears by Phule and Ambedkar - the great sons of our state. We just cannot allow the communal parties to rule cities. I am sure there will be a change of political equation in the state which will have a major impact for 2014 elections. I see it as a NDA versus UPA battle even now.

Q: There are ten huge cities corporations. You are the urban development minister. Tell us how the fortunes of these cities can be better when you have the corporation run by the same party or parties as the State government.

A: In our scheme of things, there is a lot of autonomy given to the local bodies particularly the municipal corporation. There are separate laws. For Mumbai there is separate law. For Nagpur and the other large corporations, the urban development minister has a particular role. We control the development rules in the city but actually sanctioning plans at the individual housing projects are done by the local municipal commissioners. At times we have found that there has been a clash of political interest between the people who run the municipal corporations and the state governments. The latter funds largely over and above what the municipal corporation generates as their own revenue, which leads to a conflict of interest that is working at cross-purposes. As you know certain aspects of the city governance are controlled by the urban development ministry. For instance building control rules; the development rules and recently...

Q: ...you just changed those, in fact I was going to come to those?

A: One of the problems with Mumbai real estate was that there was a clear nexus. This gave inordinate power to certain developers who had a coalition with the officials even at a political class and that eliminated competition. Hence, thousands of small developers were ruled out because they did not have access. Whether lot of discretionary powers were given to municipal commissioner whereby those discretionary advantages were given only to few builders and not to others.