Chandigarh MP Mr. Pawan Kumar Bansal has advocated for transfer of more powers and departments from Chandigarh administration to Municipal Corporation.

The elected representatives of public are answerable to them, therefore the Municipal Corporation, institution of elected representatives of people, should be strengthened and given more powers particularly of executive nature, which were presently with Chandigarh administration, said Mr. Bansal while addressing the delegates of 4^th conference of Coordination Committee of Government and MC employees & Workers, UT Chandigarh.

Bansal stressed on the need of introducing the system of Mayor-in-council. He said that necessary amendment should be made to introduce this system and administration should have only very few departments. Bansal said that he had seen the functioning of all union territories of the country and had found similar problems. The elected representatives were more responsive as compared to the officials, who are posted in UT on temporary basis.

Bansal said that he was of the view that all employees working on jobs of permanent nature should be employed on regular basis instead of being employed on contractual basis. He added that further the employees of UT cadre, despite working for two or three decades, were not able to get promotion to the top posts, which were designated to be filled from other states. This further enhances the resentment among the UT cadre employees.

Referring to the service or recruitment rules in UT, Bansal said that the officials generally interpreted these rules very conservatively.  He further added that the officials took different stands and sometimes attempt to pass on the buck by referring the issues to center. He gave example of employment of 134 sanitary employees who were deployed on sanctioned posts.  Bansal said that he had been taking up various issues of UT employees at the center. But now it was time to have better governance at UT level itself.

Bansal said that the associations of employees were also not clear whether to follow the Punjab rules of center rules.

Later a delegation of All India Bind Employees Association also called on Pawan Kumar Bansal at his residence. The delegation, led by its president Harpal Saini informed the MP that lot of posts under one percent blind quota for blinds had not been filled for the past many years.

Presently, these posts were vacant in Education, health, Tourism and CTU, they said. They further told that the blind students were getting fee concessions in schools and colleges in Punjab and Haryana but in Chandigarh, they were made to pay normal fee.

There were about 400 blind students in Chandigarh colleges, they told. Bansal assured them to take up the issues with the administration for necessary and immediate action.