From Parks to Aerocity: What Mohali’s New House Approved **Title (for context):** From Parks to Aerocity: What Mohali’s New House Approved पार्क्स से एयरोसिटी तक: मोहाली की नई हाउस ने क्या मंजूरी दी From Parks to Aerocity: What Mohali’s New House Approved

Five More Decisions From the Same Meeting

The LRMC renovation, CCTV surveillance, and fire safety audit have been covered separately. The June 27 House meeting did not stop there.

Parks: One Office, Not Five

Mohali has 695 parks. Of those, 198 are already being maintained by Residents' Welfare Associations rather than by the MC directly. The system for getting there has been fragmented: multiple offices, unclear processes, inconsistent enforcement.

The House approved a single nodal authority to run the entire RWA parks programme. One office processes applications from RWAs wanting to take on maintenance. One office monitors whether they are following MC guidelines. One office holds the power to cancel agreements when they are not. The maintenance assistance rate stays at Rs 4.23 per square metre.

Officials said the change is expected to bring more RWAs forward voluntarily. If approaching the MC for a parks agreement is simple and the process is clear, more of Mohali's 497 unassigned parks get maintained by people who actually live next to them. That reduces the MC's burden and typically produces better-kept parks.

Councillors also used the parks discussion to raise public toilets — specifically the need for caretakers and security staff on site to ensure proper upkeep.

Public Toilets: Double the Staff, Double the Budget

The House unanimously approved revised maintenance budgets for all 89 MC-run public toilets across the city. The current arrangement puts two employees per toilet complex. That is not enough for a full day of proper maintenance across two shifts.

Under the new arrangement: four workers per complex, with one male and one female employee in each of the two daily shifts. Monthly cost per toilet goes from Rs 26,000 to Rs 51,000. Total annual spend across all four MC zones comes to over Rs 527 lakh — Rs 116 lakh each for Zones 1 and 2, Rs 127.48 lakh for Zone 3, Rs 168 lakh for Zone 4.

Public toilet cleanliness was one of the factors that dragged down Mohali's Swachh Survekshan rankings under the previous administration. Doubling the budget and staff in the first meeting is the new administration's clearest early signal on what it considers fixable.

The F&CC Fight

The Finance and Contract Committee is the MC's most powerful standing committee. Every significant tender, contract, and budget allocation passes through it. Who sits on it is not a procedural question.

Congress councillor and Leader of Opposition Narpinder Singh Rangi said the committee must be constituted strictly per the MC Act, with Opposition members included for oversight and transparent decision-making. AAP's Harvinder Saini proposed that the authority to constitute the committee be vested entirely in the Mayor. The House passed the AAP proposal by majority.

Rangi also raised something harder to dismiss. After the new House was sworn in on June 9, the MC floated 63 tenders on June 11 and another 95 on June 12. One hundred and fifty-eight tenders in the first three working days. He asked that these works be brought before the House for discussion before bids are finalised, so elected councillors can verify they actually address ward priorities rather than pre-existing lists.

Aerocity: Who Pays When GMADA Hands Over

Akali Dal councillor Harvinder Singh from Ward 22 asked a practical question: what happens to development works in Aerocity now that those areas have been transferred from GMADA to the MC? Does the MC have the budget?

The MLA's answer: development in the transferred areas will not stall. The MC will pay for works in its jurisdiction and recover the amount from GMADA afterward. The specific recovery mechanism was not spelled out in the meeting but the commitment is on record.

This matters for Aerocity property owners and residents. Infrastructure handover from GMADA to MC has historically produced gaps in road maintenance, drainage, and street lighting as the two bodies argue over responsibility. An on-record assurance that the MC will absorb costs and recover later removes at least the first part of that argument.

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Sources
- Hindustan Times — Mohali MC House meet: Single nodal officer for RWAs seeking to maintain parks, June 27, 2026