Haryana MC elections: Delimitation of wards in 5 cities begins, says ULB minister

Urban local bodies minister Dr Kamal Gupta was in Karnal on Wednesday to chair a meeting of the district public relations and grievances committee

Weeks before the tenure of five municipalities in Karnal, Panipat, Yamunanagar, Hisar and Rohtak ends, the process for delimitation of wards has begun in the five cities of the state, said urban local bodies minister Dr Kamal Gupta.

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Gupta was in Karnal on Wednesday to chair a meeting of the district public relations and grievances committee.

Speaking to the media, he said the state election commission has to take a call on when to conduct the polls, but the government has begun its delimitation exercise.

Delimitation is a process of reorganisation of wards based on population, social composition and geographical area, and is undertaken ahead of the elections to ensure fair representation of different sections of society.

“We have initiated the process in these civic bodies with term left for weeks. Ad-hoc committees have been formed in these districts. We have already completed the process and reservation of wards in almost all of the 38 other civic bodies, where the elections are due,” the minister told the reporters.

The house terms of all the municipal corporations (MCs) in the five towns end in January next year.

In December 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that contested on its lotus symbol won the mayor seat in all the civic bodies.

In a first in the state, the mayors of the five MCs were elected directly by the voters. Two electric voting machines (EVMs) were used simultaneously to vote for mayor and councillors candidates.

The municipal elections in these places assume significance as they are the home towns of chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar (Karnal), former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Rohtak) and Bhajan Lal (Hisar), and as they could be conducted in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and later the Assembly polls at end of the next year.

However, there is no visible mood on the ground for the election activities, as the government is likely to delay and conduct the elections after other elections in the state as high-stake MCs in Gurugram, Faridabad and Manesar are also pending for months, people familiar of the matter said.

In Karnal, an ad-hoc committee led by deputy commissioner Anish Yadav that was constituted for delimitation met for the first time on Thursday.

The committee includes mayor Renu Bala Gupta, MC commissioner Abhishek Meena, deputy mayor Naveen Kumar, councillors Mukesh Arora, Monika Garg, Yudhvir Saini, Rajni Parocha and officials of the ULB department.

A person part of the meeting said they were told how the delimitation will be conducted based on Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) to determine each ward’s population, ensuring a similar number of voters.

DC Anish Yadav told the HT, “The wardbandi exercise is underway and we’ve been told to complete it by the January end.”