Cong urges governor to withhold assent to Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025

Chandigarh, Oct 1 (PTI) A delegation of the Punjab Congress on Wednesday met Governor Gulab Chand Kataria here and urged him to withhold assent to the Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025, claiming that it "undermines the very spirit of the Improvement Trusts and raises serious constitutional concerns".

The Punjab Assembly on September 29 had passed the Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025. At that time, Local Government Minister Dr Ravjot Singh said the motive of this Bill was to enable urban local bodies of the state to utilise funds available with the Improvement Trusts.

The minister also said that the Bill was aimed at upgrading municipal infrastructure and improving management of civic services for the residents of municipal towns in the state through optimal utilisation of resources of Improvement Trusts.

The Punjab Congress delegation was led by Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa and it met Kataria at Raj Bhavan here on Wednesday.

The delegation comprised MLAs Aruna Chaudhary, Vikramjit Singh Chaudhary, former deputy chief minister O P Soni and former speaker Rana K P Singh.

In the memorandum submitted to the governor, Bajwa said the Punjab Town Improvement Act, 1922 created Improvement Trusts as area-specific, quasi-autonomous bodies to conceive, finance and execute improvement schemes -- street layouts, slum clearance, housing, trunk infrastructure -- within the municipal area concerned.

"Their finances were designed to be ring-fenced, receipts from scheme land disposal, betterment charges, rents and other local sources were to be recycled into the same locality to meet scheme liabilities and to deliver promised civic assets.

Referring to the Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025, he said it introduces a municipal development fund (MDF) and mandates that such portion of money as may be prescribed from Trust property disposals be transferred to the MDF, a budgetary pool effectively forming part of the state's consolidated financial architecture.

This alters the character of Trust funds from locally earmarked resources into fungible, state-level funds to be allocated at the executive's discretion. This raises multiple constitutional and administrative infirmities, he claimed.

The Bill delegates the core fiscal decision -- how much of a Trust's property proceeds must be diverted, when and subject to what ceilings or exemptions -- to rule-making, without statutory guardrails. The open-ended phrase "such portion as may be prescribed" invites unbridled discretion, risking unequal and capricious treatment of similarly situated Trusts and their beneficiaries, said Bajwa.

Although styled as a municipal development measure, the effect is to divert locally generated, scheme-linked funds into a state-level pot that can be used anywhere, potentially including bodies not connected with the originating Trust or even non-municipal areas, wrote Bajwa.

The Congress leader urged the governor to withhold assent to the Punjab Town Improvement (Amendment) Bill, 2025, and reserve the Bill for the consideration of the President of India in view of the "constitutional infirmities, the departure from the basic principles of the principal Act, and the conferral of unbridled discretion enabling the executive to fritter away local Trust funds anywhere in the state". PTI CHS KSS KSS