Chandigarh, Dec. 31 -- Amid the growing clamour for extending the Chandigarh mayor's tenure to five years, UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria seems to have taken the middle-ground approach, assuring councillors that he is in favour of extending the term to at least two-and-a-half years. Attending the municipal corporation (MC)'s last General House meeting of the year as a "special guest", the administrator told the councillors that he will take up the issue of extending the mayor's term with the Union home minister. While discussing the pros and cons of having a mayor for a longer term, Kataria acknowledged that the current one-year term is too short. He described a two-and-a-half-year term as practical. "The basic advantage of a mayor's five-year term is that one gets enough time to plan and execute projects. But sometimes it is seen that in five years, even standing committees are not formed by mayors who don't work," he said. On the idea of selecting a mayor through direct election - in Chandigarh, a mayor is elected by the councillors - the administrator said, "It is sometimes seen that when the mayor is powerful, the councillors' role becomes weak as all the powers are vested with the mayor." "...But I have made this decision to extend the mayor's term because elections should be fair and transparent. This is the reason why next year's mayor will be decided by a show of hands," he said. Recently, Chandigarh Member of Parliament (MP) Manish Tewari also introduced a private member's bill in the Lok Sabha, proposing to extend the tenure of the mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor of the Chandigarh MC from the current one year to five years. The bill seeks amendments to the Punjab Municipal Corporation Law (Extension to Chandigarh) Act and related provisions to bring the tenure of the three top municipal posts at par with the five-year term of the MC itself. The tenure of mayor had been fixed at one year when the MC was officially formed on May 24, 1994, by extending the Punjab Municipal Corporation Law (Extension to Chandigarh) Act, 1994. Since the formation of the MC the city has had over 30 mayors. Under the existing system, where the mayor and both deputy mayors serve only a 12-month term, major development projects face discontinuity....