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On September 12, the Telangana Legislative Assembly passed the Core Urban Region (Integrated Governance) Bill, 2026, or the CURE Bill, replacing the decades-old Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Act of 1955.
The CURE Bill establishes a new unified governance framework for Hyderabad’s Core Urban Region (CURE), which currently includes three municipal corporations — GHMC, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC), and Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation (MMC).
While the Bill’s statement of objects and reasons promises "citizen centric governance" that enables "clear accountability” and "meaningful citizen participation", the text of the CURE Bill delivers a stark paradox.
From a rushed, opaque public consultation process to the creation of new administrative bodies that bypass local governance structures, a fine reading of the CURE Bill reveals how the text of the law betrays its own stated objectives and constitutional principles.
Rushed public consultation
The democratic deficit of the CURE Bill began well before its passage on September 12.
When the draft bill was published on the official GHMC, CMC, and MMC websites for public consultation on July 5 this year, the state government allowed a mere 20-day window.
The draft bill was available only in English, and the mode of submitting suggestions and objections was restricted to an online portal. Undeterred by various concerns expressed by civil society groups, the public consultation concluded on July 24.
Despite these barriers, the Bill is reported to have received over 4,000 suggestions and underwent 70 changes before it was introduced in the Assembly. Yet, we know little about what these 4,000 suggestions were, the 70 changes that were made and the rationale behind making those changes.
Even after the Bill has been passed, it remains unavailable for public access on the Assembly website. It is no exaggeration to say that the public consultation process adopted for the CURE Bill does not reflect citizen-centric governance and meaningful citizen participation.
The apex governance council and executive committee
A fine reading of the CURE Bill, as it was presented and passed in the Assembly, reveals that the Bill suffers from a constitutional infirmity. Perhaps the most novel and striking aspect is part III of the Bill — ‘Integrated Governance Architecture for CURE’. This is particularly true of chapter 26, titled 'Coordination', which contains provisions on the CURE apex governance council and CURE executive committee.
In fact, the implications of the CURE apex governance council formed the core of the concerns expressed by MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the Assembly on 12 September 2026.
They argued that the Bill vests overarching powers with the chief minister and officials, thereby diminishing the powers of mayors and the elected municipal representatives.
Responding to these concerns, Minister for Legislative Affairs D Sridhar Babu said that the Bill will not take away the powers of mayors and corporators. He claimed that it will set only broad policy decisions in the CURE area and strengthen the powers of the mayor.
Despite this assurance, the text of chapter 26 tells a very different story.
Section 232 makes it clear that the powers and functions of the apex council, chaired by the Chief Minister and not mandated to have any elected representatives from the municipal corporation, are not limited only to setting broad policy decisions in the CURE area. It also holds the power to “deliberate on frameworks, plans, and programmes for coordinated urban governance within the CURE” and “perform such other functions as may be necessary to achieve integrated and effective governance of the CURE.”
Interestingly, among the 70 changes that the Bill underwent before being introduced in the Assembly, one change is that the phrase ‘deliberate on’ in this provision replaced the term ‘approve’ in the draft version released for public consultation. Given the powers and functions of the CURE Executive Committee, this change seems to be cosmetic.
The bureaucrat-led CURE executive committee is chaired by the Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department, and consists of commissioners of all corporations in CURE and other officials.
Here too, the mayors and elected municipal representatives find no place. Any additional members to both the apex governance council and executive committee can only be included by the chairperson as special invitees.
The powers and functions of the executive committee are to “implement and give effect to the decisions and directions of the CURE Apex Governance Council”.
With regard to policy issues, the executive committee must “monitor the implementation of projects, schemes, and directives issued under this Act” and “perform such other functions as may be assigned by the CURE Apex Governance Council or the [state] Government.”
Irrespective of how one interprets these provisions, this framework in the CURE Bill, bolstered by monitoring and enforcement duties of the executive committee, places a superstructure of power and governance over the existing municipal governance structure.
It is a superstructure where elected mayors and elected ward committees, much less the resident welfare associations (RWAs), ordinary citizens, and working populations, find no place.
This structure runs directly counter to part IX-A of the Constitution of India. Articles 243P, 243Q, and 243W explicitly mandate municipalities as institutions of local self-government driven by elected representatives and ward committees, not unelected super-bodies.
These problematic provisions are in addition to section 311, under which the state government already holds broad, binding powers to issue actionable directions to any municipal corporation or department within CURE to resolve inter-corporation bottlenecks and to ensure proper implementation of the Act.
Who makes the rules?
In its following chapters, part III of the Bill sets up several new, specialised, inter-corporation bodies, including HYDRAA, the Climate Action Cell, the Lake Protection Committee, the Heritage Committee, the Utility Coordination Committee, the CURE Disaster Management Authority, CURE Traffic Management and Road Safety Authority, and the CURE Smart Governance Centre.
While the policy intention to establish dedicated bodies for various pertinent issues of urban governance is laudable, the Bill defers the composition, powers and functions, procedures, financial provisions, and other operational terms of these bodies to delegated legislation. This means the state government can unilaterally frame rules, make decisions and issue notifications.
These provisions can be challenged in court for not laying down sufficient legislative guidance and excessively handing over the law-making power to government departments and officials. At their core, these provisions violate the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers or the doctrine of checks and balances among the three branches of government — legislature, executive, and judiciary. This doctrine forms the heart of democratic governance by the rule of law, where no single branch of the government holds absolute power and these branches keep each other in check.
A critical question thus arises: will these specialised bodies—lacking statutory guarantees of transparency, public participation, and social accountability—foster inclusive, equitable urban governance, or will they further alienate citizens and reduce urban governance to a domain controlled by experts, bureaucrats, and corporates?
Furthermore, strangely, the jurisdiction of the bodies established under part III of the Bill, including the apex governance council, is not limited to CURE itself.
The Bill provides in its part III that “the Government may, by general or special order, authorise any body or authority under this part to exercise its powers outside Core Urban Region.” In effect, HYDRAA, or the CURE Traffic Management and Road Safety Authority, can be empowered by the state government to act in other municipalities and gram panchayats, bypassing the local governance structures of those areas.
This provision does not lay down any guidance on the circumstances in which this power can be invoked and the limits of this power.
This provision also creates a legal contradiction: while section 3 of the Bill holds that a legislative amendment is necessary to include any area into CURE, the provision in part III allows the state government to issue an order and effectively bring any area under the jurisdiction of the bodies the CURE law sets up.
In other words, this provision is a repository of power for the state government to do something indirectly which it cannot do directly.
Transparency and public grievance redress
Tucked away in the Bill’s miscellaneous and supplementary provisions, as its very last entry, is a solitary clause that mandates the proactive disclosure of public information (clause 16, schedule IX).
This clause is the same as section 686-A under chapter XXII-A of the GHMC Act. This clause requires the corporation to disclose crucial information such as financial statements of balance sheets and a list of beneficiaries of all welfare and subsidy programmes.
It also requires disclosure of particulars of master plans, development plans or any plans concerning the development of the corporation area. Further, it requires the particulars of major works together with information on the value of works, time of completion and details of contracts, and details of corporation funds to be shared.
The text of this clause reflects the Bill’s stated objective of ensuring citizen-centric governance. However, the implementation of this provision under the GHMC Act has been wanting for effective implementation. Without actionable timelines for implementation, independent oversight, and necessary political and bureaucratic will, this clause in the CURE Bill is unlikely to see any different result.
Despite its stated core objective of “ensuring accessible and effective grievance redressal mechanisms”, the CURE Bill does not have provisions for public grievance redressal. Through the state’s public grievance redressal mechanism ‘Prajavani’, official corporation websites, and the MyCure mobile app, the state government has already put in place a dedicated public grievance redress mechanism for numerous civic services and amenities related to the corporations.
However, citizens regularly express concern that field officers mark grievances as ‘resolved’ or ‘closed; on the platform without visiting the site, conducting physical repairs, or providing verifiable photo proof. Complaints that are not closed often remain pending without status updates or internal escalation pathways.
To date, standard operating procedures (SOPs) for processing grievances and prescribed timelines for resolution of grievances are not available to the public.
An RTI reply from the GHMC acquired by Hyderabad Mail points to pendencies and unclear classifications of the status of grievances. The response also reveals that there is both a need and potential for strengthening corporation public grievance redress systems.
The CURE Bill is a missed opportunity for institutionalising public grievance redress systems and giving effect to its own stated objective of ensuring clear accountability.
This omission reflects a broader pattern where flaws in law-making translate into administrative gaps on the ground. The challenge extends beyond the Bill’s rushed passage and undisclosed public feedback. Past experience shows that without statutory safeguards, unguided delegation of powers to the executive only deepens opacity. Ultimately, by choosing centralised executive power over local self-governance, the CURE Bill betrays its own stated objectives.
Akhil Surya is a lawyer and activist from Hyderabad with focus on social accountability practices, constitutional law, urban governance and labour.
Views expressed are the author’s own.
