Lok Sabha polls, Swachh will keep GHMC off roads till mid-19

Hyderabad: Public services are likely to be hit badly for at least four months since the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has to prepare for the door-to-door Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls (IRER) in the city, immediately after the conclusion of the Assembly elections on December 7.

The civic body has to begin the voter enumeration from scratch, where its staff have to visit every household in the city and include names in the electoral list if found missing. They also have to include new voters, who have completed 18 years of age and delete names from voters’ lists if people are found dead after issuing a prior notice.

A corporation official said that the entire process taken up during the ongoing Assembly elections would need to be performed afresh to publish a voters list draft by January 20. He said that this process required huge manpower and the corporation staff, barring heads of departments, would participate in it.

Parallelly, the civic body on conclusion of the Assembly elections would shift its focus to Swachh Survekshan. Similarly, 90 per cent of the ground staff will be deployed to maintain cleanliness, beautification and carry out awareness campaigns to attain better ranking for the city. Corporation officials claimed that revenue collection and progress of infrastructure and maintenance work like roads would be hit very badly until the conclusion of the Lok Sabha elections.

Highly placed sources in the corporation said that citizens would have a tough time with bumpy roads and severe traffic snarls due to the busy poll season. The corporation has already been facing a severe fund crunch and it has not been receiving the allocated amounts at regular intervals ever since the dissolution of state Assembly in September.

This has badly hit the administration for three months since the corporation is not in a strong financial position to clear the bills for regular maintenance work like road repairs, paying salaries to outsourced employees, sanitation and other related work.

Once the IRER begins, the staff will be deployed on voter enumeration work for three months, which would be the crucial time for property tax collection. Sources said that the busy schedule would have a negative impact on revenue collections for the financial year 2018-19.

Sources said that once the Election Commission of India announces the Lok Sabha poll schedule, the model code of conduct will come into effect and all the major infrastructure projects would be affected.

A senior GHMC official said that a team of corporation officials would focus on Swachh activities. He said that citizens have already been facing difficulties with the non-availability of officials for addressing their grievances and this would continue for a few more months.  The corporation is yet to receive '200 crore from the state government and this has been pending for two months. Due to delay in funds allocation, the maintenance work has been hit and it is likely to become worse.

The official further said that GHMC cannot make alternative plans with the limited staff deployed for voter enumeration, Swachh activities, election duty and property tax collection. 

He said that property tax collection will have a major impact for the current financial year.