After receiving nearly 3,600 suggestions and objections to the draft delimitation map of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) for the forthcoming local polls, the civic body has decided to hold a public hearing on the same over two days – February 24 and 25 – against its earlier plan of holding it on one day.
The PMC, on the directions of the State Election Commission (SEC), had published the draft delimitation map on February 1 while seeking suggestions and objections to it till February 14. Several citizens, organisations, probable candidates and sitting corporators have submitted their opinions on the proposed delimitation.
A total of 2,804 objections were raised on the last day, taking the total count of objections raised to 3,596 on the draft delimitation.
After the hearing, the expert committee should submit suggestions to the SEC by March 2 after which the final map of delimitation for the upcoming civic elections will be declared.
“It is not possible to hold a hearing on each suggestion and objection considering the number of those received by the PMC. Thus, we have clubbed similar suggestions and objections into 125 groups and have accordingly prepared a timetable for the hearing,” said Ajeet Deshmukh, in-charge of PMC’s election department.
All applicants would be invited to the hearing as per the timetable, he said. The SEC has appointed S Chockalingam, Director General of the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) as the designated officer to hold the public hearing.
As per the draft delimitation, Yerwada is the largest electoral ward while Baner-Sus-Mhalunge is the smallest ward in the city considering the population distribution among the 58 electoral wards in the PMC. A total of 173 corporators would be elected to the civic general body for the next five years. The current term of the general body ends on March 15.
This time, the PMC is going to have more women corporators than men as 87 of the 173 seats are reserved for women. This is in accordance with the state government’s legislation to keep 50 per cent seats reserved for women in local civic bodies. Besides, 23 seats will be reserved for the Schedule Caste (SC) category and two for the Schedule Tribe (ST) category. The remaining 148 seats are for the open category as the court has withheld political reservation for the OBC category until information on category-wise population is collected by the state government.