Transparency & accountability in urban local bodies in Haryana: A study

“Accountability and transparency are generally considered the two main pillars of good governance. Accountability is an assurance that an individual or an organization will be evaluated on their performance or behavior related to something for which they are responsible. The term is related to responsibility but seen more from the perspective of oversight. Accountability, on the other hand, means that the employee is held responsible for successfully completing the task and will have to at least explain why theyfailed to do so. The present paper focuses on the issues of transparency & accountability in urban local bodies: A study of selected municipal bodies in Haryana. The main objective of this paper is to examine the transparency and accountability in urban local bodies. It is observed that there is lack of direct people's participations in policy making process of the Municipal bodies. The citizens in majority are not satisfied with the councillors and officials regarding realization of accountability as to what they do and what they do not do. A large number of citizens also do not know to whom these members and officials are accountable for their working. This causes corruption in the Municipal bodies. Mostly the members who are involved in corrupt practices hail from the ruling party ofstate, so the action is not taken against them because oftheir political attachments. In fact the respondents have rightly pointed out the unaccountable working of the MB. Majority of the respondents reported that due to the interference of local politics, corruption, lack of funds and untrained staff. According to the views of the respondents, transparency in the working of the Municipal bodies is lacking”.