Pune: The delimitation process of areas under Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), as mandated by the Supreme Court’s directives, has not gathered pace. Civic officials said it is complex as it involves the old city areas and 34 merged villages of which two have been demerged. “We are expecting the state’s directives soon. The administration is preparing the infrastructure and the manpower that will be needed for completing the delimitation on time,” Prasad Katkar, a senior official from PMC’s election department, said.A senior PMC official said clarity about the delimitation for PMC areas is awaited from the state govt after which the administration will speed up the process.The delimitation process is where electoral boundaries are recast for fair representation and equal voter weight so that each constituency has roughly the same number of voters, according to Election Commission of India. Specific details about the population to be considered for the formation of wards, manpower required for the process, dates for the formation of the new ward system, calling for suggestions and objections, and finalising the new wards are pending.A PMC official said, “Formation of new wards will be inclusive of the newly merged areas. The number of wards will most likely go up. But the exact number can only be decided after the state election commission’s directives.”The administration will take about two months to complete the delimitation process and then the final maps of the wards will be published.The apex court in May had ordered the state election commission to notify elections for local bodies within four weeks while disapproving of bureaucrats manning panchayats and municipal corporations because elections were not held. A bench of justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh told the EC to follow the OBC reservation specifications that existed before the Banthia Commission’s report of July 2022.According to political experts, efforts are needed to complete the election process in time. Technical issues like the expansion of the civic limits should not be an obstacle.“If needed, elections for old and new civic limits can be conducted separately. Such an exercise was successfully carried out in the past for PMC areas,” Ujwal Keskar of Apale Pune, Apala Parisar, a citizens’ forum, said.head: City May Get 42 wards 166 corporators will be electedForty wards will be of four members and two wards will be of three membersThe wards have been proposed on the basis of the 2017 civic polls when a four-member system was implementedMaha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) govt introduced a three-member systemAfter Mahayuti regained power, it scrapped MVA’s plan and again promoted the 2017 four-member systemThe forthcoming elections are expected to take place based on the four-member system
