Civic administration of Kolkata

The civic administration of Kolkata (the metropolitan city and the capital of the West Bengal state of India) is executed by several government agencies, and consists of overlapping structural divisions. At least five administrative definitions of the city are available; listed in ascending order of area, those are: 1) Kolkata District, 2) the Kolkata Police area, 3) the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area ("Kolkata city"), 4) "Greater Kolkata", which adds to the KMC area a few areas just adjacent to it,^[1] and 5) the Kolkata Metropolitan Area.

To focus on number 3, that is, the area within which the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) functions, the government of that area involves at least the following authorities: the KMC itself, the Kolkata Collector (see Kolkata District), the Kolkata Police, the Collector / District Magistrate (DM) of South 24 Parganas District, and the Superintendent of Police (SP) of South 24 Parganas District.

The Kolkata Collector collects land revenues within a relatively small part of the area within which the KMC functions;^[2] the Kolkata Police performs police functions in the Collector's area and also an adjacent area; and the KMC provides services such as water in the Kolkata Police's entire area and also an adjacent area.

In the Kolkata Police's "adjacent area", revenue collection is performed by the Collector/DM of South 24 Parganas District. And in the KMC's "adjacent area", revenue collection is performed by the Collector/DM of South 24 Parganas District, and police functions are performed by the SP of South 24 Parganas District (who is under the Collector/DM of that district).^[3]

The Kolkata Collector's area is known as Kolkata District. The Kolkata Police's entire area comprises eighty-six wards of the KMC in their entirety, plus most of another six KMC wards.^[4] The KMC's entire area comprises all 141 wards of the KMC. "City" in relation to Kolkata is not an official term; when used, it normally refers to the KMC area.

It may seem paradoxical that the area of a district should be a subset of one urban area, since normally a district contains numerous urban areas as well as rural areas. This and the various other complications of Kolkata's government are mostly explained by the fact that Kolkata's gradual urban sprawl had somehow to be accommodated to existing political boundaries.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC, formerly the Calcutta Municipal Corporation), established in 1876, is responsible for the civic maintenance and infrastructure of Kolkata. The Kolkata Police, headed by the Police Commissioner, comes under the West Bengal Home Ministry. The city is administratively divided into several police-zones subdivided into 59 local police stations—48 of them under the Kolkata Police^[5] and 11 of them (counting two outposts) under the Superintendent of Police of South 24 Parganas District.

The city also has an apolitical titular post, that of the Sheriff of Kolkata.^[6] The Sheriff presides over various city-related functions and conferences. Another ancillary civic body is the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) responsible for the statutory planning and development of the Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA).^[7] The KMA includes a large suburban hinterland around the urban centres of Kolkata.

As the capital of the state and the seat of the Government of West Bengal, Kolkata houses not only the various offices of local government listed above, but also, for the state level, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, the Secretariat (Writers' Building) and the Calcutta High Court. Kolkata also has lower courts; the Small Causes Court for civil matters, and the Sessions Court for criminal cases. The city elects 3 representatives to the Lok Sabha (India's lower house) and 21 representatives to the state Legislative Assembly.^[8]

[edit] Notes