Drafting ward boundaries: SEC asks state to start process for local bodies, govt raises questions on commission’s ‘hurry’

Sources in the government said the SEC wrote to the state government on March 14, three days after Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari had given his assent for two bills that gave powers to the state government with regard to preparing the draft ward boundaries of local bodies. The SEC listed the status of the election process undertaken by the Commission, which are overdue in municipal corporations and councils, zilla parishads and gram panchayats.

“We have also informed the government about the local bodies whose elections will be due in the next few months. Due to the amendments to the law, the government is expected to carry out the exercise of drafting the ward boundaries with the approval of the State Election Commission. We have also brought to the notice of the government the directions issued by the Supreme Court on the issue. So, we have asked them to carry out the process as soon as possible,” said an official from the SEC.

Sources said that elections of five municipal corporations, 205 municipal councils and 1,930 gram panchayats are overdue. Besides, elections to 16 municipal corporations, 25 zilla parishads, 284 panchayat samitis and 7,831 gram panchayats will become overdue in the next few months.

After the Supreme Court, in March, rejected the State Backward Class Commission’s interim report restoring the OBC quota in local bodies, the state government amended the laws to take over the powers of delimitation of the ward boundaries to defer the polls further by a couple of months.

However, officials from the state government appeared to be shocked at the letter, and they have questioned the ‘hurry’ behind it and asked whether the SEC was creating records for the Supreme Court case. “Though we received the assent to the bills on March 11, the state government is in the process of preparing the rules for the process to divide the wards of local bodies. Since these powers were with the SEC earlier, we feel that they were very much aware of the rules required for the division of ward boundaries. Still, they wrote to us, asking us to carry out an exercise of delimitation of ward boundaries. We fail to understand what is the hurry or whether they are creating records for the SC case,” said an official from the state government.