Indian Express 10.06.2010
Delimitation effect: AMC to get more councillors from reserved category
Express News Service Tags : Corporation, councillors Posted: Thu Jun 10 2010, 01:11 hrs
Ahmedabad: Thanks to a revised fixation of wards boundaries under the delimitation exercise, the number of reserved category councillors is all set to go up to nearly 25 in the general board of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). The prevailing norms allow 20 Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates and one Scheduled Tribe (ST) representative.
Former Congress councillor Jayantilal Parmar said this situation will arise because in areas where the SC population is sizeable, the reserved status has been removed to avoid repetition of reserved status in any one area for a longer period.
“The number of reserved category councillors in the 192-member house will go up to around 25 because of this,” Parmar said.
But at the same time, he criticised the way the wards have been formed, changing the voter profile. According to him, this has been done in an unscientific manner disturbing the caste balance “to suit the BJP”.
For example, ward number 46 (Kankaria) has the highest concentration of SC voters, but there is no reservation here this time and all three seats are for the general category. The second seat in ward number 11 (Old Vadaj) is reserved for the backward caste and those in ward number 16 (Saijpur Bogha) and 54 (Mahavirnagar) have been reserved for SC community.
In all, seven seats have been reserved for women SC candidates and 14 for male SC candidates in as many wards.
Ward number 19 (Girdharnagar) has the highest population of ST voters, forming 5.63 per cent of the total voters, but the ST seat has gone to ward number 12 (Sardarnagar).
This will make the sitting councillors of reserved categories scurrying for new areas where they may not be welcomed. Of the total 45,05,537 population of all the 64 wards in the city, there are 11,01,693 SC and 42,054 ST voters. The average population in each ward is 70,999.
Even as the Opposition is analysing the notification in detail and is likely to come up with its suggestions in a week’s time, city BJP president Rakesh Shah termed as baselless all allegations of the State Election Commission being a political tool of his party.
“It is an independent body and our party also may have certain grievances about the new delimitation of wards. We are also analysing the notification and will come out with our suggestions in a couple of days,” he said.
