Malappuram: The Delimitation Commission for the bifurcation of wards in panchayats and municipalities has been constituted in the state. The Kerala government has issued a notification in this regard.
The Commission is tasked with the reassessment of ward boundaries prior to the local body elections scheduled to be held this year.
State Election Commissioner V Bhaskaran will be the chairman of the Commission, with local self-government principal secretary Sharada Muraleedharan, transport principal secretary K R Jyothilal, tourism secretary Rani George, and general education secretary A Shajahan as its members.
The guidelines and the procedure for ward delimitation have also been issued. The grama panchayat/municipal wards will be bifurcated based on the 2011 census.
The Commission should submit a draft recommendation on the redrawing of ward boundaries to the District Electoral Officer (district collector) before April 22.
The District Electoral Officer has to ascertain if the draft recommendations are as per the guidelines and reply to the Commission before April 24.
The Commission will publish the draft recommendations on delimitation of wards on April 27.
The Commission will accept objections and suggestions on this until May 8. The complaints can be given to the Commission secretary or the District Electoral Officer.
The District Electoral Officer can recruit officials to probe the complaints and submit the probe report. They have to submit the report before May 18. Subsequently, District Electoral Officers have to give the report to the Commission before May 5.
Name the wards
As per the guidelines, the bifurcation must start from north-west end and proceed in the clockwise direction. The population of each ward in a panchayat should be roughly the same as of the other wards in the panchayat.
The average population of a ward should be arrived at by dividing the total population of the panchayat/municipality by the total number of wards. Apart from assigning number to a ward, a name also has to be given.
The most prominent and widely known regional name has to be given. The numbers of all buildings have to be noted as well.
EC relaxes procedures
Meanwhile, the State Election Commission has relaxed the procedures on renewing the voters' list in the wake of the COVID-19 scare.
The electoral registration officers have been instructed that they need not directly meet the complainants or go to their houses to issue notices on applications seeking to remove name from the voters’ list due to reasons such as death.
In such applications, the officers can take a decision, without conducting inspections, if they are convinced.
The other applications can be postponed for the next round of voters' list renewal.
The deadline to submit the applications ahead of the local body polls had ended on Monday.
The officials have to check and settle the applications before March 23.
This is the third time in a week that the Commission is issuing amendments on the procedures for voters' list renewal.
The Commission had last week issued an order that those who cannot turn up for hearing on the voters' list renewal can instead entrust their relatives to represent them.
Soon another order was issued that those who submitted the documents can be included in the list without holding a hearing.
