The membership of each Municipal Council is fixed by the state government. The basis is the population of the concerned urban area.

Every Municipal Council has the following types of members:

I. Directly elected members from the Municipal area.

II. MLAs representing the area of the Municipal Council are ex-officio members.

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Reservation of Seats:

Reservation of seats for:

(i) Scheduled Castes,

(ii) Backward Classes, and

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(iii) Women, is a rule.

The ratio of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes is in proportion to the population of Scheduled Castes in the Municipal area. One seat is reserved for the Backward Classes. No less than 1/3 of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes are to be reserved for Scheduled Caste women. 1/3rd of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election in each Municipal Council (including the number of seats reserved for-women belonging to the Scheduled Castes) stand reserved for women.

Qualifications:

The qualifications for membership of a Municipal Council are:

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(i) A person must be a citizen of India.

(ii) His name should figure in the voters list of the area.

(iii) He must at least be 21 years of age.

(iv) He should not hold any governmental post i.e. office of profit.

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(v) He should not have been declared disqualified for election.

Tenure:

The tenure of the Municipal Council is 5 term. The term begins from the date of the first meeting of the Municipal Corporation. If for any reason, any Municipal Council is dissolved before the expiry of its tenure, then fresh elections are to be held within six months of its dissolution.

In this case the new Municipal Council gets the remainder of the tenure of dissolved Municipal Council. However, if the remaining period of the dissolved Municipal Council is less than 6 months, it is not necessary to hold any elections for constituting Municipal Council for such a period. A new Municipal council is elected within six months and it has full tenure of 5 years.

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If in the opinion of the State Government, a Municipal Council is not competent to perform its duties or is persistently making default in the performance of duties or exceeding or abusing its powers, it can dissolve that Municipal Council. However, before doing it, a Municipal Council has to be given a reasonable opportunity for clarifying its position.

President and Vice-President of the Municipal Council:

The Municipal Council elects one of its members as the President and another as the Vice-President. The President convenes the meetings of the Municipal Council and presides over the meetings. The term of office of President of the Municipal is 5 years i.e. equal to the term of the Municipal Council. However, he can leave office by submitting resignation before the expiry of his term.

Members of the Municipal Council can also remove the President from office before the expiry of his term by passing a resolution to that effect by a 2/3rd majority. Besides this, he can be removed from office by the government if he abuses his power or is unable to discharge his responsibilities in a proper manner.

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Reservation for the Office of President:

A fixed percentage of the offices of the Presidents of Municipal Councils in a State are reserved for the persons belonging to SCs and women.

Meetings:

Meetings of the Municipal Council are held once in month. In other words, twelve meetings are held in a year. 1/5th of the members of the Municipal Council can put in a request for convening a special meeting. Thereupon the President of the Municipal Council has to convene a special meeting within 14 days of the receiving of such a request.

Quorum:

The quorum of the Municipal Council stand fixed at 1/2 of the total membership. All the decisions of the Municipal Council are taken by majority. In case of a tie, the President can exercise a casting vote.

Executive Officer of the Municipal Council:

Executive Officer is an important officer of the Municipal Council who is appointed by the State Government out of the State Cadre of Municipal Officers or State Civil Services Cadre. He has the responsibility to implement the decisions taken by the Municipal Council.

He runs the day to day administration of the Municipal Council, collects the taxes imposed by the Municipal Council, issues and rejects licenses, and exercises control over Municipal Councils Officials. Besides, Executive Officer, Municipal Council has several other officers also, such as Health Officer, Engineer, Sanitary Inspectors, Octroi Inspectors and others.