Delhi municipal polls to be held soon as Centre approves delimitation panel report on redrawing MCD wards

The Centre has fixed the total number of seats as 250 in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, of which, 42 seats have been reserved for members of Scheduled Castes.

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New Delhi: The Centre has approved the delimitation committee's final report on redrawing the wards of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. In an 800-page gazette notification dated October 17, 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the Central Government has fixed the total number of seats as 250 in the Corporation, of which, 42 seats have been reserved for members of Scheduled Castes.

The delimitation exercise in Delhi was last conducted in 2016 and the number of wards was kept at 272 with each having an average population of 60,000 considering a variation of 10 to 15 per cent.

Municipal polls were slated to be held in Delhi in April this year. They were put on hold hours before then Delhi State Election Commissioner SK Srivastava was to announce the schedule on March 8 due to the Centre's plan to reunify the three civic bodies.

Subsequently, a Delimitation Committee was constituted which was headed by Vijay Dev, State Election Commissioner, NCT of Delhi with Pankaj Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India and Randhir Sahay, Additional Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, as members to assist the Central Government in carrying out the delimitation of wards.

The said Delimitation Committee then completed its exercise with regard to the preparation of the draft Delimitation order and submitted its report to the Central Government on August 25.

The Draft Delimitation Order was then published on September 12 and put on the website of the State Election Commission for information to the general public.

Meanwhile, the BJP, which was ruling the three municipal corporations in Delhi for over a decade before their reunification, the AAP, and the Congress have started preparation for the polls.