District admin gears up for civic body elections

Anantapur: Municipal administration department has begun preparations for the upcoming civic body polls and has issued notification for delimitation of wards in the state, following the unscientific methods used during the previous polls.

The municipal administration department has found huge variations in the population in the wards of certain municipal corporations since delimitation has not been done properly and particularly, delimitation of wards in certain municipalities were not done, adopting the 2011 census population figures.

It has been decided to issue a time schedule again for preparation and submission of ward division proposals (delimitation of wards) by the municipalities, with a direction to adopt the 2011 census population figures for division.

A total of 70 municipalities and three municipal corporations will face the impact of the delimitation process, following improper formation of wards.  According to the G.O, around three municipal corporations — Chittoor, Kadapa and Machilipatnam will have changes as part of the delimitation process while 10 municipalities in Guntur district and 9 municipalities in Anantapur and East Godavari will be under the delimitation process.

Seven municipalities in Prakasam district and 6 municipalities in West Godavari district will have changes of wards in the delimitation process.

“Since huge variations have been noticed in the population in the wards of certain municipalities and corporations and delimitation of wards has not been done properly, there has been a fresh proposal to settle issues, without encouraging unnecessary controversies and legal issues,” municipal director Vijayakumar observed and further added that if the population of an ULB is one lakh and the number of wards are 40, the average population in the  wards shall be 2,500. Ideally, the minimum population should be 2,250 and maximum of 2,750 in a ward.

The GO also made it clear that variation in population in the wards shall not be more than 10 per cent of the average population in a ward as far as possible. Ward division shall commence from the North East point of the geographical boundary of a corporation or municipality and wards shall be numbered in seriatim in the clock wise direction. The preparation of draft delimitation of municipalities and municipal corporations is scheduled to begin on September 4 and will get completed by September 24.

Analysts said that majority of the municipalities will have change in results because of the delimitation process.