The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Deputy Mayor will have to look for another ward

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 15, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Deputy Mayor will have to look for another ward

Kannal Achuthan

Thiagarajan's ward is now reserved for women

CHENNAI : Chennai Corporation Deputy Mayor R. Thiagarajan, AIADMK floor leader V. Sukumar Babu and DMK whip in the council P. V. Kalyanasundaram are some of the councillors who will not be able to seek re-election from their present wards in the forthcoming local body polls.

The wards are among the 52 divisions reserved for women, according to the notification of reservation released in the Tamil Nadu Government Gazette Extraordinary published on Monday. Rotation of reserved wards is to be done every ten years, according to the Tamil Nadu Town Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporation Rules 1996. Of the 155 wards in the Chennai Corporation, 66 fall under the reserved category.

According to the gazette notification, 45 wards have been reserved for women (general category), 7 for the scheduled caste (women) and 14 for the scheduled caste (general).

Other councillors who cannot run for re-election in their present wards include M. Subramanian (Saidapet ward), P. Vetrivel (Anna Nagar West), S. Narayanan (Ko.Su.Mani Nagar) and P. Ravi (V.O.C. Nagar), as their wards have also been reserved for women.

Some councillors have alleged that the move was made to deliberately to prevent them from seeking re-election but Chennai Corporation officials asserted that the reservation was done based on government regulations.

A senior Corporation official said that the reservation rotation was done based on the 2001 census data. Among the 21 wards reserved for SC candidates, one-third was allocated for SC women candidates based on the proportion of women in the wards.

Similarly, the proportion of women in a ward was used as criterion for the classification of `women reserved wards'. If a ward with the maximum number of women population was already a reserved constituency, then the ward with the next highest number was taken for reclassification.

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