March 2022 deadline for delimitation survey of wards

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has set a March 2022 deadline to complete a delimitation survey of its wards, to cover all areas under its jurisdiction before next year’s civic polls

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has set a March 2022 deadline to complete a delimitation survey of its wards, to cover all areas under its jurisdiction before next year’s civic polls.

A private agency will assess the need for an increase in the number of wards, as the MCG added 16 villages and areas located near the Dwarka Expressway and Manesar border under its ambit last December. (HT Archive)

MCG commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja issued directions in this regard to officials during a meeting at the MCG’s Sector 34 office on Monday.

Officials privy to the matter said that the process to hire a private agency to carry out the survey will start this week, and that it will assess the need for an increase, as the MCG added 16 villages and areas located near the Dwarka Expressway and Manesar border under its ambit last December.

The MCG has 35 wards at present.

“As per the provisions of the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994, I have directed officials to start the process of ward delimitation. The survey will be carried out on the basis of the actual population falling within the MCG limits. For this, the process of hiring a private agency has been started. The survey has to be completed latest by March 2022 so that the survey report can be sent to the Haryana government the following month for perusal,” Ahuja said.

The meeting was attended by officials of the MCG’s town planning branch and administrative wing.

MCG officials privy to the matter said that in the survey, data on caste, blocks and maps will be detailed following a door-to-door assessment. Officials have been assigned duties for monitoring the same.

According to a senior MCG official who attended the meeting, the delimitation process will be initiated well in advance so that there is no delay in conducting the MCG elections next year.

“The municipal councillors have just around a year left on their tenure. The delimitation of wards was a major crisis back in 2016, due to which municipal elections had to be deferred for nearly 17 months. Hence, to avoid a repeat of a similar scenario, preparations are being made in advance. It is likely the total number of municipal wards would be increased to 37-38, taking the latest population figures in mind,” the official cited above said.

The MCG elections in 2016 were deferred as there was a difference in the 2011 census and an MCG survey of the city’s population. The census figures pegged the city’s population around 0.9 million while the MCG pegged it at 1.15 million.

In March 2016, the directorate of urban local bodies (ULB) notified an order stating that as per the Haryana Municipal Corporation Delimitation of Wards Rules, cities with a population between 0.8 to 1 million can have 32 municipal wards. However, since its inception, the MCG has been operating with 35 civic wards.

An ad-hoc committee of the Haryana government later found the city’s population to be above 1 million and the MCG elections finally took place in September 2017.