How do Municipal Acts Vary?

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India’s urban governance is shaped by a patchwork of 69 municipal acts, each with its own story—some statewide, others crafted for specific cities. From colonial-era laws still in use to new acts passed decades after the 74th Amendment, the diversity is striking. But what do these acts say about the powers, people, and functions of our city governments?

According to Nāgrika’s analysis, 69 different municipalities acts in India govern 3,941 statutory towns in the country (barring the statutory towns in union territories, including Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh). Typically, the municipal acts are of three types – statewide general municipal acts, separate acts for establishing municipal corporations, and acts that are specific to individual municipal corporations.

Of the 69 municipal acts in the country, 28 are statewide municipalities acts, 15 are for statewide municipal corporations, while 26 are acts for specific municipal corporations. This means most acts in the country are general municipal acts, which govern all municipal governments in the state, including municipal corporations in case separate acts do not exist for them.

A large number of acts that cater to specific types of municipal governments means that legislation can cater to the specific needs of municipal governments. The act that administers a large municipal corporation like the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation may not be relevant for smaller nagar panchayats.

Similarly, a smaller municipal government does not have the need for a big body of staff and hence does not require the details in administrative processes that a municipal act like the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980, provides.

The number of acts in the country for specific municipal corporations is almost the same as the statewide municipalities acts, indicating that typically there are separate municipal acts for larger municipal corporations. But a look at state-level data shows us that this trend is true only for a few states.

Source: Nagrika

There are two outliers – Tamil Nadu with 15  and West Bengal with 8 – when comparing the number of municipal acts per state. While the national average is 2.4 acts per state, without counting these two states, the average comes down to 1.7 acts per state.

Time Frame of Introduction of Acts

The 74th CAA introduced changes to how local governments in urban areas were administered and mandated these changes. To introduce these changes, the state governments had to either amend their respective municipal acts or introduce new ones. Let’s have a look at the breakup of these acts on the basis of when they were introduced. The figure below shows us that more than 25 percent of the municipal acts have been legislated in the last 25 years.

We see that of the 69 Municipal Acts in the country, a majority (39) were legislated before 1992, i.e., before the introduction of the 74th CAA. The remaining 30 acts were legislated after the amendment. The time period of 1947-1992 accounts for 33 acts, almost half the number of total municipal acts in the country. Pre-independence acts account for the least, with six acts.

While it would not have been unfair to assume that the immediate years post-74th CAA would have seen many new municipal acts being legislated, we see that it is actually after the year 2000 that the second highest number of municipal acts were legislated, with 19 acts, while the time period of 1992-2000 had 11 acts.

Five pre-independence colonial-era municipal acts that are still operational in the country are the following:

• Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888

• Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919

• Punjab Municipal Act, 1911

• Uttar Pradesh Municipalities Act, 1916

• Tamil Nadu District Municipalities Act,1920

Two of these acts govern two of the biggest and oldest municipalities in the country, Mumbai and Chennai, while the other three are state-wide municipal acts, with the one for Uttar Pradesh being used as a base in Uttarakhand as well.

India shows great state-wise variance when it comes to municipal acts. While some states have only one act to govern all the municipal governments in the respective state, others have greater degrees of specifications of the acts. While bigger and older municipal corporations in the country tend to have their own municipal acts, more recently established corporations, like Guwahati Municipal Corporation and Nagercoil Municipal Corporation, also have their own acts.

Municipal Acts are legal documents which not only establish local governments in urban areas but also provide the guidelines for their functioning as well. One of the most important aspects of local governments are the functionaries who carry out the functions of the municipalities.