Necessity of direct elections

Direct elections of mayors will help to address these lacunae in the following ways:

♤ Responsiveness of directly elected mayor will be greater than that of indirectly elected.

♤ It will strengthen grass root democracy.

♤ Direct elections combined with greater executive and financial powers to the Mayor will improve his performance.

♤ Since mayor is directly elected he can be held accountable by people.

♤ The Mayor will be more attuned with problems of people.

♤ It will reduce interference of the local MPs/MLAs in municipal functioning.

However, it is also fraught with certain issues and this system has not been too encouraging in some states like Tamil Nadu, which are reverting to indirect elections. This is because of the following reasons:

♤ Less Powers: Not only direct elections but devolving financial and executive powers municipalities is also needed which states are reluctant to do.

♤ Political Deadlock: If the mayor is of different political party and majority of council members are from different parties then it leads to deadlock in decision making, which is often the case.

♤ Due to the party system, Mayors are still more inclined towards party than being accountable to people.

Yet, these issues are not impossible to smoothen out and strong will on the part of state governments and personality characteristics of mayors can make the system a success like that in Kolkata.