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Proposed   Administrative   Procedure
#LM.07   :   Recallable   City-Councilors
Purpose : Reduce damage cuased by nexuses of city councilors.

    Contents
  1. Background
  2. The problem
  3. Proposed ADDITIONAL procedure
  4. The ONLY drawback
  5. Draft of the law to enact procedure #LM.07
  6. Recalling MLAs/MPs

Background

The purpose is to bring India's administration/courts at par with West. How? By improving record keeping in GoI-offices and reducing nexuses in GoI-offices and courts. How? We would need several laws to achieve that.

LM.07 is one of these proposed laws. (To see the list of some of the laws, please click here). The proposed law LM.07 will improve law-making at city/district level.


The   Problem
  1. Within 6 weeks after getting elected, over 99 out of 100 Councilors start focusing on bribery rather than law-making.
  2. Even if a handful of Councilors are committed, those Councilors' priorities may not be in the sync with the priorities of the common men.

Proposed Solution : #LM.07 --- Effectively Recallable Councilors

The procedures, as defined by Recallable Assistant Councilors Act, are as follows
    (The following proposal is drafted for City Councils. For Panchayats, please change the title of Mayor to Sarpanch, Councilor to Panchayat Member etc).

  1. The Municipal Commissioner, or a person Deputed by him, will work as the Registrar for these procedures.

  2. Any person can pay a fee of say Rs 1000/- and register himself as an Assistant Councilor for a Municipal Ward. The Assistant Councilor will need to pay Rs 100 every month to the Registrar to continue his Councilorship. The fee will be waived if over 5% citizen voters of the Ward have appointed him as Assistant Councilor.

  3. Any citizen may or NEED NOT, appoint any of the Assistant Councilor as his alternate representative to the City Councilor of that ward.

  4. To select an Assistant Councilor, the citizen voter will need to go to the Registrar's office, pay a fee of Rs 2 to Rs 5, show his voter-ID or ration card and specify the name/number of Assistant Councilor he prefers.

  5. The clerk will enter the citizen's ID number, Assistant Councilor's serial number etc into the computer and the computer will print the reciepts. A sample of the reciept is shown below

    SAMPLE   layout   of   the   Reciept
    that the citizen will get when he appoints an Assistant Councilor

    

    Registration  of  Advisor  to  
the  City-Councilor 
     (Fee : Rs 3)
    

Dear Mayor, 
        I advice you to consider following 
person as an effective Advisor to Councilor 
hence forth  ---- The Citizen.  

      Reciept Number  3245-345-01                 
                Date  28/03/2001
Citizen's Card Number  67897899  
       Citizen’s Name  Prakash Mehta   

     Candidate Number  Abad-0062   
       Candidate Name  Amrit P Mahta
 
Clerk’s name, number, sign
      Suresh Pandya/67-092/S Pandya 

Citizen’s Thumb Print


  6. A citizen can change Assistant Councilor any day any time after paying Rs 2 to Rs 5 fee.

  7. For each candidate, for each City-Council Ward, the Registrar will publish the statements every week, showing entries of citizens who have registered him as their Assistant Councilor.

    SAMPLE   of   the   List   that   each   Advisor   to   Councilor   will   get 

    Candidate Number : Abad-0062
Candidate Name   : Amrit P Mehta

Ward Number : 13/432
Ward Name   : Shahpur - Ahmedabad

Number of voters : 145,267

Number of citizens whom you Reprensened, as of last week     13,354   
Number of citizens who selected you last week                     8
Number of citizens who recalled you last week                     2

Number of citizens you Represent = 13354 + 10 - 2 = 12,362


    

Citizens who appointed you as Representative

       Card No        Name             Reciept No  Previous Opinion
 1     2158112      Divan, Sudhir         21851        -
 2     2350222      Mehta, Vimal          58783        -  
 3     2885461      Jain, Bimal           40203        - 
 4     3156068      Patel, Suhas          13720        -
 5     3737486      Khan, Suhel           42995        NO
 6     4040625      Sai, Samir            36446        - 
 7     4514433      Shankar, P            56375        -
 8     4759652      Khan, Suleman         57412        NO
 9     5176682      Seth, Vineet          99653        -
10     5311764      Singh, Jasvinder      19675        -


    

Citizens who recalled your Representation 

       Card No        Name               Reciept No  Previous Opinion
 1     4020310      Khan, Akbar            14964        -
 2     4210275      Holkar, Babu           19675       YES
 3     4633510      Ramesh, P              42995        -
 4     5637330      Divakar, Sudhir        57412        -


  8. An Assistant Councilor can submit a Bill to the Mayor by paying a fee of Rs 1000/- to the Mayor. The Mayor/Registrar would allow the Assistant Councilors and Councilors to register their YES/NO on that Bill within next 60 days. The Assistant Councilors will have to pay a fee of Rs 100/- for registering their YES/NO, while Councilors may register it for free.

  9. If a Councilor or an Assistant Councilor DOES NOT register his YES/NO, the Mayor will take their vote as a NO.

  10. An Assistant Councilor's YES/NO's weight will be propertional to the number of citizens who have appointed him as their representative, and the Primary Councilor's YES/NO's weight will be equal to the number of citizens who have NOT opted for an Assiatnt Councilor.


    Example
    1. suppose the population of Ward is X i.e. say 100,000

    2. Supose there are 3 Assistant Councilor, A, B and C, each having approval of X1, X2 and X3 voters say for example 5000, 10000 and 20000 voters. And
      X0 = X - X1 - X2 - X3 = 100000 - 5000 - 10000 - 20000 = 65000 voters have NOT appointed any Assistant Councilor.

    3. Now say that Primary Councilor votes as YES, A votes YES, and B and C vote as NO. Then
      • YES-votes = Votes of Primary Councilor + Votes of A = X0 + X1 = 65000 + 5000 = 70000
      • NO-votes = Votes of B + Votes of C = 10000) + 20000 = 30000


    4. So
      YES-fraction = 70000/100000 = 0.70
      NO-fraction = 30000/100000 = 0.30


  11. The Mayor will thus calculate the YES-fractions and NO-fractions of ALL the Wards, on 61st day after the Bill was presented, and will declare the Bill as passed of YES-fraction exceeds NO-fraction.

  12. Salary of Asst Councilors and limiations on his powers : please the details in the Draft of the Act

  13. Explicit recall of Councilor : If any Assistant Councilor's approval count is over 50% and 5% more than residual approval count of the Councilor, then within 14 days, the Mayor will appoint that Assitant Councilor as the councilor, and the Council will become the Assistant Councilor with approval count equal to his residual approval count.

    Example : Say a person is a councilor in a constituency of 100,000 voters. Say 3 individuals A, B and C have registered themselves as Assitant Counclors. Say 5000(5%) have approved A, 10000(10%) have approved B and 15000(15%) have approved C. So approval count of the councilor will be 100% - 5% - 10% - 15% = 70%. Now say approval count of C increases to 55%. Then residual approval count of the councilor will fall to 100% - 5% - 10% - 55% = 100% - 70% = 30%. So assistant councilor C's count is now over 50% and over 5% more than that of the councilor. So within 14 days, the Mayor will need to appoint C as Councilor, and the existing councilor will become Assistant Councilor with approval count of 30%.
    (Please note : the above step, of explicit recall would require a bill in Assembly).
     Thus citizens can EFFECTIVELY recall his Councilor by appointing an Assistant Councilor, and replacing him anytime if the need be.


A ONLY drawback of this proposal --- Less confidentiality

     The ONLY drawback of the scheme is that the list of citizens who have opted a perticular person as their Assistant Councilor is NOT fully confidential. It will be as confidential as bank statement or share market transactions.

     But how relevant is this drawback? Consider other tools of Democracy except election procedure such as filing a complaint against govt officer, or filing a PIL or collecting signatures of a protest petition or organizing a public protest. How confidential are these means? There is zero confidentiality for all practical purpose. In case of petition signatures have to be given. Basically, there is no confidentiality these days anyway.

     The drawback is minor with the advantages Recall procedures provide --- citizens' control over the representative and the reprsentation.


Draft for #LM.07

To enact the administrative procedure #LM.07 in a District/City, a law needs to be passed in the City Council or District Panchayats. For the the EXACT Draft (Text) of the law, please click here.


Allowing citizens to recall MLAs/MPs

     On this web-page, I have proposed and described a procedure by citizen can EFFECTIVELY recall his City Councilor or PPanchaya Member. There are two similar procedures allow citizens to recall MLA or MP respectively.

     The details of the proposals are given in


Next - LM.08 : Recalling MLAs