Civic body may redraw zone boundaries

CHENNAI: Greater Chennai Corporation may opt to reclassify a set of wards under different zone limits to facilitate better administration, according to commissioner and special officer D Karthikeyan.
On Thursday, the civic body met the representatives of political parties and resident welfare associations to receive objections on the draft ward delimitation proposal. In one particular case, residents of ward 29 (Chinna Sekkadu) under zone 3 (Madhavaram) submitted before the commissioner that they would prefer to be reclassified under zone 2 (Manali) due to the proximity of the zonal office to their neighbourhood.

Karthikeyan, who accepted Chinna Sekkadu residents’ petition, later told TOI the state government would explore reclassifying wards under different zones. This process, he said, would begin after the conduct of local body elections.

The civic body has redrawn ward boundaries using the population brackets of 15,000, 20,000, 30,000 and 43,000. Since the publication of the proposal in January, the corporation has received 499 objections from disgruntled parties. Chief among the petitioners are representatives of political parties, including the former city corporation councillors.

“The men (councillors) think that their vote base is affected (due to delimitation). It is an obvious feeling,” said K Ganapathy, former DMK councillor. Ganapathy said the residents may oppose splitting of wards because they prefer to voice their demands to a single representative.

“If you split a nagar (neighbourhood) into two, it makes life difficult for people because they will have to reach out to different councillors,” he said.

This aspect was seen when residents from Ezhil Nagar slum tenement raised objection to the corporation splitting up Kannagi Nagar sum tenement from their ward. In the draft proposal, Kannagi Nagar is allotted a separate ward (196) with a population of 40,923.

State Election Commissioner Malik Feroze Khan objected to the petition saying ward 196 already exceeded by 105%, the permitted number of residents allowed for each ward in Sholinganallur. “If we add around 24,000 Ezhil Nagar residents, then the deviation would be 225%,” said a corporation official.