Raghubar Das, the BJP MLA from Jamshedpur East and Urban Development Minister in Jharkhand’s NDA government that fell last month, has been lobbying for a municipal corporation in the city, founded by Jamshedji Tata in 1907. A 64 sq km area that currently falls in the Tata’s administrative zone will come under an elected urban local body if the plan goes through — a sore point that is expected to snowball into a full-scale territorial battle.

The tussle began earlier this year when Das, a former employee with Tata Steel and whose name still figures on the company payroll as being on “long leave”, mooted the idea for a municipal corporation to access funds under the Centre’s Jawarharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

Tata Steel, which pays a nominal rent for the land leased by the government, is unhappy because it is the steel giant’s subsidiary Jamshedpur Utility and Services Company (JUSCO) that has been providing water, street lighting and road maintenance services to the Jamshedpur Notified Area.

And it is not just the Tatas who are seeing the political intervention into the city’s future as a threat. After the state urban development ministry floated the plan for a civic body in Jamshedpur in June this year, a citizens’ forum moved the Ranchi High Court with a public interest litigation, asking the court to reject the proposal as it did not have the state Cabinet’s backing. The court’s subsequent directive for a review of the plan and a change of guard in capital Ranchi has given the Tatas a reprieve, but there remains one big question: Why does the city need a corporation when the JNNURM alternatively allows an industrial township committee in places where municipal corporations don’t exist? There is, however, no easy answer for Tata Steel.

Jamshedpur’s elevation to an industrial status under the 74th Amendment has been in the cold storage for over a decade as successive governments have been unwilling to hand over tax collection to a private agency. About 6.5 lakh people live in Tata-controlled Jamshedpur, which was designed by German urban planner Koenisberger with a 40-year perspective. Another 5.4 lakh people live in the neighbouring Mango and Jugsalai notified areas, apart from a spread of 18 villages on both sides of Subarnarekha river that cuts through the city. Together, they loosely form what is called Jamshedpur today.

According to JUSCO chief Sanjiv Paul, the company spends more than Rs 100 crore on municipal services within its notified area. “But revenues from water and electricity tariffs are still too low to meet our operating costs,” he said.

Das’s decision to hire consultancy firm Frischman Prabhu to prepare a city development plan for Jamshedpur and two other cities has also upset the Tata Steel management. “It does not appear to an integrated plan... We are unhappy with it,” said a senor official.

Ahmedabad-based Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology (CEPT), which has been appointed by the Centre to evaluate the Jamshedpur development plan, agrees that the Jamshedpur report, in its current shape, is far from satisfactory. Upset with the Frischman plan, which gives Jamshedpur six multiplexes, a ring road and a museum, the city administration has been told to rework the blueprint. “It’s alright to have a beautiful vision of the city,” says Utpal Sharma, a professor at CEPT who is examining Jamshedpur’s plan. “But it must be able to convert it into a series of financially viable projects.”