GHMC elections most likely by year-end
HYDERABAD: With a majority of political parties demanding early conduct of elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), it is likely that elections may take place at the fag end of this year, if one goes by state government's schedule.
The High Court, a few days ago, had expressed displeasure over the inordinate delay in holding polls to the corporation and directed the state government to inform it when the elections would be conducted.
Based on the directions of the HC, GHMC has chalked out a schedule and will submit it to the court on next Monday. If the court agrees to GHMC's schedule, then elections will take place in about nine to ten months' time.
Sources in GHMC said that from the date of direction from HC they would require at least 249-250 days for conducting delimitation of wards and reservation of wards as per Census 2011.
Only after issuing of clear-cut government orders on fixing the number of wards can the delimitation work be taken up. The delimitation exercise will take about 150 days and reservation of wards another 102 days.
The delimitation process includes preparation of draft proposal for delimitation of wards, proposal for divisions, re-division of the municipal corporation into wards and call for suggestions, objections from the citizens by publishing it in the Gazette and then the proposal has to be forwarded to the state government for approval.
The approved proposal should be published in the gazette by the GHMC special officer. After all this GHMC has to carry out ward-wise and polling station-wise electoral rolls.
After completing the delimitation of wards, GHMC has to take up reservation of wards to various categories that include door-to-door survey for identification of BC voters, draft publication of electoral roll in commissioner's, RDO's and MRO's office. Based on 2011 Census, wards strength would increase to about 172 or more from present 150 wards.
After completing the delimitation of wards and reservation wards, state government has to convey the message of holding GHMC polls to the State Election Commission (SEC) which is the main authority for conducting the polls to the urban local bodies.
News Posted: 12 February, 2015
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