According to a statement issued by the MCD on Saturday, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has constituted a three-member commission for the new delimitation exercise of municipal wards in Delhi. The exercise will pave the way for civic polls in Delhi, the first after the amalgamation of the city’s three corporations recently.
“Taking a step forward towards holding municipal elections, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, in exercise of its powers under Sections 3, 3A and 5 of the DMC Act, 1957, constituted a Delimitation Commission to assist the Central Government Is. To carry out delimitation of wards and other works related thereto,” the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) said in a statement. It said the panel would have three members – Vijay Dev, State Election The Commissioner, Delhi, who will be its Chairman, Pankaj Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Randhir Sahai, Additional Commissioner, MCD.
The body said the commission would submit its report within four months of its formation. The re-integrated MCD formally came into existence on 22 May when IAS officers Ashwini Kumar and Gyanesh Bharti took over as its Special Officer and Commissioner respectively.
The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was divided into three parts in 2012 during the tenure of Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister. It was recently re-integrated by merging three civic bodies – North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations or NDMC, SDMC and EDMC. Parliament on April 5 passed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2022 to unite the three civic bodies in the national capital, with the Rajya Sabha giving its nod through a voice vote after rejecting all the amendments sought by the opposition. .
As per the Bill, integration of municipal corporations will ensure coordinated and strategic planning and optimum utilization of resources. Sources in the State Election Commission here had earlier said that after the passage of the bill for reunification of the three municipal corporations, the civic polls are likely to be delayed by almost a year.
The first elections were to be held in April. Sources said that since the bill seeks to increase the number of wards to 250, the Center will constitute a Delimitation Commission after it is passed by both the Houses of Parliament.
The Delimitation Commission will then initiate the exercise of reorganizing the municipal wards according to the population of the respective assembly constituencies. “The delimitation exercise alone will take around six-seven months. After its completion, the report of the commission is to be notified by the Center and then the process of rotation of wards and other election exercises will begin. It is likely to take around a year to conduct municipal elections in Delhi,” a source had said soon after the passage of the bill.
Delhi currently has 70 assembly constituencies. The three erstwhile corporations consisted of 272 wards – 104 each in the North and South Corporations and 64 in the East Corporation.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during a discussion in Parliament in April, dismissed the opposition’s allegation that the ruling government at the Center had brought the bill out of fear of losing civic polls, saying the BJP had no such fear. And he’s ready for it. Contest elections immediately after delimitation.
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