The Cabinet decision on Monday to pilot a Bill in the Assembly for delimiting local body wards on the basis of the 2011 census report is expected to fast-track the process and make good the time lost for clearing the air on a draft ordinance forwarded by the government for gubernatorial nod.
Local Self-Government Department sources told The Hindu that once the Bill is passed in the upcoming Assembly session, the government would fix the strength in each local body and the Delimitation Commission would be able to initiate the process in the right earnest. But it would have to strive hard to make amends for the time lost by debating over the merit of the ordinance cleared by the Cabinet earlier.
Legal problems
The chances of the delimitation procedures getting bogged down in legal tangles are too remote since most of the arguments raised against the government decision to go by the 2011 census report are unfounded, sources said.
Rules do not prevent the government from redrawing the boundaries once or twice on the basis of one census report. Successive governments had resorted to such measures and those were not legally questioned too.
The previous delimitation held in 2015 had only covered about 10% of the local bodies and the exercise was largely confined to the panchayats that were carved out either through merger and redrawing of boundaries.
Anomalies
The grave anomalies in delimiting the wards of a number of local bodies on the basis of the 2001 census report and certain others on the basis of the 2011 report still prevail.
Addressing such anomalies is not an easy task for the Delimitation Commission either. Complaints were aplenty and a vast majority of the panchayats and most importantly municipalities still do not have the basic amenities for providing efficient public service, sources said.
The current decision to add one ward to each local body, though decided mainly due to financial constraints of the government, would not be as cumbersome like a full-scale exercise and could be completed well ahead of the time set for the next local body polls, sources said.
