Samajwadi Party candidates were elected as chairpersons in 37 Nagar Palika Parishads and 78 Nagar Panchayats. (File Photo)With the urban development department and the State Election Commission (SEC) yet to wrap up their preparations for the polls, the urban local body elections in Uttar Pradesh are likely to be held in December this year, sources said. The elections will be slightly delayed as compared to 2017 when the poll schedule was announced on October 27 and the results were declared on December 1 after a three-phase polling process.
According to sources, the SEC that conducts the urban local polls is currently revising electoral rolls. Draft voter lists were published in districts on Monday and the poll panel will be entertaining claims and objections till November 7. After the disposal of claims and objections, the final voters’ lists will be published on November 18.
“Voters enrolled in these final lists will be eligible to vote and the elections would be conducted using these electoral rolls only. Hence, the elections cannot be held before November 18,” said a SEC official.
That official added that another requirement for conducting polls is the finalisation of delimitation and reservation exercise in municipal wards, and seats of mayor in municipal corporations and chairpersons in Nagar Panchayats and Nagar Palika Parishads. As on Tuesday, there are 763 urban local bodies in the state – 17 municipal corporations, 200 Nagar Palika Parishads and 546 nagar panchayats.
“The state government is also yet to finalise the delimitation of municipal wards and local bodies. In the cabinet meetings held in September, boundaries of various local bodies in Muzaffarnagar, Gonda, Baghpat, Ayodhya, Hardoi and other districts were expanded and various new nagar panchayats were created. Many more such changes may happen in the coming days. The SEC cannot announce polls until the state government finalises reservation and delimitation of the municipal bodies,” said an SEC official.
A senior urban development department official said the election process is likely to be completed by the first week of January. “The elections would be completed by the first week of January. This is because the first meeting of urban local bodies constituted in 2017 was convened in January 2018 and the government is bound to wrap up the elections before that,” the official said.
“The delimitation exercise is in its final phase. All districts will complete the process by November 4. As per the decisions taken in the recent cabinet meetings, some grace period could be given to those municipal bodies which have been recently created and others whose jurisdiction was expanded. But elections in these local bodies too will be conducted simultaneously with the others,” the official added.
The official also said that the exercise of reservation of these bodies and wards is in process. “If expansion in areas of municipal bodies hadn’t been done and the new bodies had not been created in recent days, the government would have provided the final list of reservation and delimitation of municipal bodies to the SEC for deciding the poll schedule,” added that official.
In 2017, urban local body elections were held in 652 urban local bodies – 16 municipal corporations, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats – and 11,995 wards.
EVMs were used for polling in the municipal corporations where the Bharatiya Janata Party had won a maximum of 14 mayoral seats while the Bahujan Samaj Party had clinched the other two mayoral seats.
The BJP had also won 58 seats of chairperson in Nagar Palikas and 94 in Nagar Panchayats. The BSP had won 22 chairperson of Nagar Palika Parishad and 41 chairpersons of Nagar Panchayats.
Samajwadi Party candidates were elected as chairpersons in 37 Nagar Palika Parishads and 78 Nagar Panchayats. However, the party had failed to win a mayoral seat. Congress candidates had won as chairpersons in seven Nagar Palika Parishads and 17 Nagar Panchayats.