Union Home Ministry appoints new NDMC members

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has appointed three elected members and four official members of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), as its tenure came to an end on Wednesday. Four non-official members of the NDMC are yet to be appointed. The NDMC is currently without a chairman after Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar, who was appointed to the post, retired last month.

The four non-official members, whose term expired on Wednesday, are Satish Upadhyay, who was serving as the vice-chairman, and members Kuljeet Singh Chahal, Girish Sachdeva and Vishakha Shailani.

The NDMC comprises chairman, official, non-official, and elected members, with MHA nominating these individuals for terms of five years each.

The elected members include New Delhi Member of Parliament Bansuri Swaraj, outgoing chief minister and New Delhi MLA Arvind Kejriwal, and Delhi Cantonment MLA Virendra Singh Kadian, according to a gazette notification issued on Tuesday.

Four of the five official members have been appointed, which include MHA Additional Secretary (UT) Ashutosh Agnihotri, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Additional Secretary (D) Surendra Kumar Bagde, MoHUA Joint Secretary (L&E) Ravi Kumar Arora, and Government of NCT of Delhi Secretary (Finance) Niharika Rai, it added.

Till now, none of the four non-official members have been appointed.

MCD Commissioner Ashwani Kumar has been serving as the link officer for NDMC in absence of the chairperson.

Meanwhile, Chahal said that the NDMC organised 'Suvidha Camps' every month since 2018 to provide information and redress the grievances of the residents of the area and users of services provided by the civic body.

"As many as 2,392 grievances were received last year, and they were attended to in a time-bound manner. Till August this year, 2,424 grievances were received, of which 222 are pending, which will also be resolved in a time-bound manner," he added.