MD MUSTAQUE Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This issue raises an important point on what actually should be the content of local self Government with civic functions. What is urbanisation about? Is it not a civic function with local self Government? It is local Government by the people, for the people and of the people. The attack in the present petition is on the Bihar Regional Development Authority Act, 1981.

(2.) As long as 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution had not arrived, the encouragement to even debate such issues was not available. Not a single argument has been advanced to resist the proposition that the content of the development authority within the area of a municipality has to with elected representatives. If the Government is local Government in its content, then why should peoples' representatives be eliminated in participating in municipal Government.

(3.) Circumstances of the set up which has been structured in Bihar (and Uttar Pradesh) will be better understood in its back ground. The supersession of local self Government in Uttar Pradesh began at the end of the decade of 1960s. In Bihar it happened by an ordinance. In Bihar the process started in 1971. In the context of Bihar the process started in 1971. In the context of Bihar this is best noticed in the judgment of the Supreme Court in re. D. C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar, AIR 1987 SC 579.