Congress focuses on municipal body elections in 2017

In an attempt to regain its foothold in the pockets where it was completely washed off by the AAP in the Assembly elections in the city, the local unit of the Congress is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the boundaries of the 272 municipal wards are redrawn in such a manner that it gets the maximum mileage in the 2017 municipal elections. The party has already set up a high-profile nine-member team to submit its report to the state election commission on how new boundaries should be demarcated in all the municipal wards of the national capital.

The Congress team comprises local veteran leaders Chattar Singh, Harishank-ar Gupta, Brahm Yadav, Mehmood Suri, Farhad Su-ri, Mukesh Goyal, Varyam Kaur, Kishan Murari Hat-av and Gauri Shankar Sha-rma. The team has been tasked with the job of conducting an in-dept study of all the municipal wards so that delimitation of the new boundaries is carried out in the most scientific manner. “We do not want the BJP and the AAP to take any political mileage from the delimitation of the new wards. That’s why we will be in constant touch with the state election commission chief and will provide our valuable inputs to him on a regular basis,” a senior local Congress leader told this newspaper.

At present, the three municipal bodies are being run by the BJP. There are four wards in each of the Assembly constituency. But with the new delimitation drive, some of the Assembly seats are likely to have as many as seven wards and some may be left with either two or three wards.

A senior officer said that the powers for delimitation of municipal wards in Delhi have already been delegated by the Centre to the lieutenant-governor as per provisions of Sections 3 and 5 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957. He said that the first delimitation of wards, subsequent to the creation of the state election commission, was carried out in 1993 on the basis of provisional census figures for 1991 (as final figures of population were not available at that time). “Of the 134 seats, the number of seats for Scheduled Castes was fixed at 25. Among the 25 reserved seats, nine were exclusively allotted to SC women and 37 others were kept reserved for women of general category.”

With the state election commission already in the process of carrying out the fresh delimitation exercise, the new municipal wards are now bound to be demarcated on new parameters. The new boundaries would be demarcated on the basis of total population and voter percentage of the particular ward. During the last such exercise in 2007, the parameters set for the demarcation of any ward were that it had to have about 35,000 voters among its total population of 40,000 people.

While the total number of municipal wards would remain the same, their boundaries would change due to change in their population ratio during the past several years. The new wards will have a total population of about 60,000 people, including 40,000 voters.