MCD delimitation report ‘politically motivated’, says AAP

The report marks an important step towards holding municipal elections in Delhi which were postponed abruptly in March with the Centre telling the state election commission that it intends to unify the three municipal bodies in Delhi.

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday said the draft report by the delimitation commission constituted to carve new boundaries of municipal wards in Delhi is “politically motivated”, and added that it will introduce disparities in population and sizes of the civic administrative units.

The MCD was unified in May this year. The amended Delhi Municipal Corporation Act mandates that Delhi will have 250 wards, instead of 272. (HT Photo)

On September 13, the commission put the report in public domain seeking comments and suggestions from city residents and political parties. The total number of municipal wards in Delhi have been reduced from 272 to 250, with the draft report suggesting dropping and addition of wards across 23 assembly constituencies, most of them north and south Delhi.

The report marks an important step towards holding municipal elections in Delhi which were postponed abruptly in March with the Centre telling the state election commission that it intends to unify the three municipal bodies in Delhi.

“They were required to reduce 22 wards and the easiest way to do this was to identify those assembly constituencies which had 4-6 wards and reduce one ward from there by evenly merging the population among the remaining wards in that constituency. For instance, if a constituency had five wards, they had to reduce it to four and if a constituency had six wards, there should be five wards after delimitation. They were not required to disturb any other assembly constituency except these 22 seats (which had higher number of wards). The delimitation exercise takes place in such a manner that it does not lead to huge differences in population sizes across constituencies. But the present delimitation draft has led to a situation where a ward like Mayur Vihar Phase 1 has a population of 93,381, while Chandni Chowk ward has 35,509 people. This process clearly seems politically motivated,” the AAP said in a statement.

“The exercise has been called out for lack of logic, rationale and reason by experts across the board. It has been argued that the reorganisation of wards under MCD delimitation may pose a threat to the development of the national capital and put interests of the working-class wards in the dark. 22 assembly constituencies were to see a reduction of one ward each under delimitation, but the ward structure of all 70 constituencies was reorganised in the draft order,” the party said.

The draft report has been criticised for disparity in the redistribution of population across the wards. This also contradicts the terms of reference set for the panel by the Union home ministry. The guidelines and methodology issued by the home ministry on July 22, 2022 state: “As each assembly constituency shall be divided into minimum three wards, the principle of average population may not be maintained throughout, therefore a deviation of plus or minus 10% from average population may be acceptable to the Central government, if geographical features, contiguity of areas...so warrant.”

Since the commission has used Census 2011 data for Delhi’s population, the average number of residents in a wards should be 65,000.

The AAP also said that the “huge difference” in population size in various wards puts every single densely populated ward at a disadvantage.

An official in state election commission said the public feedback and objections will be studied and the panel will try to accommodate them.