Also, 23 seats will be reserved for the Scheduled Caste category and two for the Scheduled Tribe category. (File) Pune city will have more women corporators than men corporators for the next five-year term in general body of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). The polls for the next term are going to take place in next few months as the current five year term of PMC ends on March 15.
The state election commission holds elections before the end of the term but the civic polls are likely to get delayed due to the pandemic affecting preparations.
As a step towards holding the elections, state election commission has declared that the draft delimitation map with boundaries of each electoral panel for PMC would be published on February 1. Citizens are invited to file suggestions and objections on it by February 14. The public hearing should be completed by February 28 and the expert committee should submit suggestions by March 2 to the state election commission which will then declare the final map of delimitation for the coming civic elections.
As per the state government decision, the strength of corporators for PMC has been increased from 164 to 173, considering the extension of civic boundaries and increase of city population.
In the notification for delimitation process, the state election commission has stated that 87 of the 173 seats in PMC will be reserved for women. This is in accordance with the state government legislation to keep 50 per cent seats reserved for women in local civic bodies. Thus, there will be at least one female corporator more than male corporators in the next general body to be formed after elections.
Also, 23 seats will be reserved for the Scheduled Caste category and two for the Schedule Tribe category. The remaining seats have been kept for open category as the court has withheld political reservation for the Other Backward Class category until the actual information on category-wise population is collected by the state government.
The state election commission stated that the process for getting information on category-wise population is likely to get delayed so it has undertaken the delimitation process to fix the boundaries of the electoral ward.
As the state government has decided to hold a multi-member system for civic polls with a maximum of three-member in one electoral ward or panel, there will be a total of 58 electoral wards in PMC for the coming elections with 57 wards to elect three members each and one ward to elect two members.
The approximate population of the city is 35,56,824, including 4,80,017 SC and 41,561 ST category, based on the 2011 census. Thus, the maximum population for a ward is 71,390 and minimum population of a ward is 37,589.
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