Hyderabad :
Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has given green signal to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to go ahead with delimitation of divisions and reservation for the purpose of elections to the civic body
GHMC commisisoner Somesh Kumar broached the delimitation issue with the chief minister when he met him at the Secretariat on Tuesday. In view of the increase in population as per Census-2011 (67,31,790), the number of the wards (divisions) is likely to go up to 172 from the present 150. The delimitation work will begin after issuance of a government order which is expected soon.
The government is required to complete the process before the third week of this month in the wake of a recent High Court’s direction to the municipal administration department and GHMC to carry out delimitation of wards as per the GO 570 of MAUD at the earliest. Only after the delimitation should the government hold elections of the GHMC, it said.
The state election commissioner wrote a letter to the GHMC asking it to comply with the court order that polls be held before December 3, when the term of the present body expires, as mandated under Article 243 U (3)(a) of the Constitution.
The SEC will need 35 days to complete direct election of corporators or ward members (28 days) and indirect election of mayor and deputy mayor (7 days). The election notification is to be issued in the last week of October so as to complete the process before Dec 3.
The SEC has, therefore, asked the state government and GHMC to chalk out the schedule for delimitation of wards and reservation of seats. Based on the Census-2011, the number of wards will increase to 172 from 150. The number of elected members for the first 50 lakh population will be 143 and for the rest of the population it will be 29.
For every 60,000 people over and above 50 lakh there should be one additional elected member. That means there will be 28 elected representatives for a population of 16,80,000 and one for 51,790.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Telangana / by S. Bachan Jeet Singh / October 22nd, 2014