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Journalism of Courage
With just a day left to submit public opinion on the draft of delimitation of electoral ward for forthcoming polls of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the Maharashtra government has designated bureaucrat V Radha to conduct a public hearing on the suggestion and objections on the applications received.
The Maharashtra government while initiating the process for civic polls declared the draft delimitation of electoral ward and sought public opinion on it till September 4. The hearing on the suggestions and objections will be held from September 5 and 12.
The designated officer will submit a report on the hearing to the state election office and recommend necessary changes. Thereafter, the state government would declare the final delimitation map of the electoral wards.
Opposition parties Congress and NCP(SP) have alleged that the draft delimitation has been prepared solely for the benefit of BJP. “The main guideline for preparing the electoral ward was to keep natural bodies as boundaries but the draft for PMC has ignored that and has not considered river, nallah and roads as boundaries which would have adverse impact on development of the ward,” said city Congress chief Arvind Shinde.
“In few places, localities with reserved category population has been split into different electoral wards which seems to be done intentionally to ensure that the locality does not get reservation of their category in civic polls which social justice eludes the people of the area”, said city NCP(SP) chief Prashant Jagtap.
He said few electoral districts have been prepared in such a way that they are spread in the area of more than two state assembly jurisdictions.
A total of 595 objections have been submitted on draft delimitation till September 1 and it is expected to increase in the next two days before the September 4 deadline.
The Pune civic body is presently under the rule of Administration as there have been no elections held after the end of previous term in 2022. The Supreme Court had directed the state government to hold elections as early as possible after which the election process was started.
