The Hindu : Kerala News : Civic poll schedule may be disrupted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

Civic poll schedule may be disrupted

N.J. Nair

Staggered polls to cause loss to the exchequer

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the deadline set by the Government for completing the delimitation of wards in the local self-government institutions expires on Tuesday, it has become almost clear that elections to six district panchayats, the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, nine block panchayats, six municipalities and 28 grama panchayats are unlikely be held in September.

The civic elections, which are considered as an acid test for the Assembly elections, will not therefore be possibly held in almost 40 per cent of the Assembly constituencies in the State. Any failure in conducting the elections all over the State at a time will incur heavy loss to the exchequer.

Main reasons cited as being responsible for a possible disruption in the schedule are delay in amending the Panchayati Raj and Municipalities Acts to facilitate the constitution of the delimitation commission, rejection of the Local Administration Ministry's proposals for revising the voters list and the formation of a three-member commission later.

Local Administration Department sources told The Hindu that its proposals for conducting the elections in a time-bound manner were repeatedly turned down by the Government. On learning that procedures for delimiting the wards on the basis of the census report of 2001 could not be completed before September, the Local Administration Ministry had, during the tenure of A.K. Antony as Chief Minister, mooted a proposal to revise the voters list on the basis of the latest census report. This would have made the process easy since each local body would need to assess the population strength of each ward and make alterations after fixing the minimum and maximum strength.

But this proposal was rejected later by the Cabinet headed by the Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, which decided to go ahead with the delimitation process. The Cabinet decided to increase the minimum number of wards in a grama panchayat and block panchayat from 10 to 12 and the maximum was put at 22. The number of wards in a district panchayat was fixed at 16 and 32, 22 and 52 in a municipality and 52 and 100 in a corporation as per the latest census report.

After deciding to delimit the wards, the Government did not follow it up by initiating steps aimed at expediting the ancillary process to complete the entire procedures on time. It took almost two months for the Government to move an amendment in the Assembly for facilitating the formation of the commission. The Local Administration Ministry suggested that the commission be headed by the State Election Commissioner, N. Mohandas, and have on it the Panchayat and Municipal directors as members.

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