Reserved list of Delhi’s new civic wards released
The Delhi state election commission, in an order late on Thursday night, released the list of wards that will be reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and women.
New Delhi: The Delhi state election commission has kicked off a series of steps to expeditiously hold civic elections as the 250 new municipal wards have been redrawn in the delimitation exercise, officials familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
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Further, the poll body, in an order late on Thursday night, released the list of wards that will be reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and women.
The commission has appointed registration and returning officers, and verified the functioning of 56,000 EVMs (electronic voting machines). A reservation order is expected shortly, the officials said.
As many as 42 of the 250 municipal wards are reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Castes while 50% of the overall seats are reserved for women. The announcement of reserved wards will pave the way for pre-election preparatory work as the viable candidates will start pushing for tickets from the three key political parties based on the status of the wards.
“All the wards were arranged in descending order of the SC population and the top wards will be selected for reserved seats. Among the reserved wards, the odd-numbered wards may be taken up for SC-women reservation,” a commission official explained. Similarly, for determining the status of the rest of the wards, the remaining 208 wards will be arranged and odd-numbered wards are expected to be reserved for women.
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The last reservation order was issued on January 25 this year, for which a rotation mechanism was used. “The wards that were reserved in 2017 elections were de-reserved and the next set of wards in the list of descending order of population were taken up in the January 2022 exercise. But since the wards have been reconstituted, rotation does not make sense. We have to start afresh,” a second election commission official said.
The state election commission has also issued a notification for the appointment of electoral registration officers (EROs) and returning officers for elections to the 250 municipal wards. The election commission has appointed 68 officers for the wards falling under the 68 assembly units covering the MCD’s jurisdiction.
The order issued by state election commissioner Vijay Dev on October 19 said the EROs have been appointed in consultation with the Delhi government as per the provisions of Section 7B of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 which pertains to elections to the civic body.
The DMC Act says that these EROs are tasked with the preparation and revision of rolls for each ward.
“Most of these officials are of the rank of sub-divisional magistrate, assistant commissioners, administrative officers and value added tax officers and additional district magistrates. They will also be acting as the returning-cum-scrutinising officers for the further polling process,” an official explained. After the delimitation, each assembly in Delhi is divided into 3 to 6 wards -- 38 assemblies will have 3 wards each, 17 will have 4 wards; 10 will have have 5 wards, and 3 will have 6 wards.
On Wednesday, the state election commission issued orders for the finalisation of tenders related to all MCD election work before October 21. The order issued by the under-secretary of the commission said that the “delimitation order has already been notified and elections are likely to be conducted shortly. It is imperative that all the vendors for various works are finalised and fully geared up to meet the requirement for smooth conduct of elections”.
The commission had earlier asked the tender committee to finalise the process for hiring vendors by October 10 but no further communication or progress took place on the matter.
The state election commission on Wednesday completed the exercise of rechecking and certifying the 56,000 EVMs that will be used. The machines were last checked in March earlier this year for the MCD polls that were supposed to be held in April.
“All EVMs have been checked by teams from the election commission and technical experts from ECIL Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. We have verified that the buttons are functional, and data is recorded correctly in each of these EVMs, which have been certified and sealed,” an official said.
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