Cong demands caste-wise reservation for GHMC polls

Senior leader Shashidhar asks govt whether wards will be increased

The Congress party found fault with the ward-wise reservations in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits.

Former minister, M. Shashidhar Reddy, demanded that the TRS government give a clear picture on whether wards in GHMC would be increased. If not, he asked for transparent surveys based on caste reservations in the wards well in advance in order to conduct a free and fair election. He said enumeration should be completed and reservations declared at least one week prior to the election notification.

The Congress party discussed the ongoing special summary revision with reference to January 1, 2021 as the cutoff date and some glaring irregularities were pointed out. During the meeting with party leaders at Gandhi Bhavan, it was decided that it would be taken up with the chief electoral officer, Dr Shashank Goel.

The state government did not come out with any categorical statement about their intent to continue with the same number of 150 municipal wards for the coming GHMC elections, said Reddy, adding that if they come out with this, they will also have to announce whether they will continue with the wards as per the delimitation done last time or fresh delimitations will be carried out now.

“The delimitation of divisions was taken up on the basis of the 2011 population census. Hyderabad population census data is gathered on the basis of 35 census wards, which are not the same as the GHMC wards for holding elections. There are wards number 1 to 23 on the Hyderabad side and 1 to 12 on the Secunderabad side. Further, each of these wards comprise enumeration blocks (EBs). EB-wise census data should be put in the public domain by GHMC. Similarly, GHMC should also put out the EB-wise break up of each of the 150 wards (divisions) of the GHMC with the details of SC and ST population. If the delimitation process is completed in such a way, the opposition will know which of the 150 wards should be earmarked for SC and ST reservation. The other category will be BC reservation. The number of BC voters are determined ward-wise after an enumeration is done on the field, polling station-wise,” said Reddy.

During previous polls, several discrepancies have been found in the enumeration of BC voters. Caste-wise reservations in the wards and data were manipulated accordingly, to make the 150 wards suit the ruling party, said Reddy, adding “In 2015, we had focused on the large-scale illegal deletion of lakhs of voters, which was stayed with the intervention of the election commission of India. It had led to the transfer of the then GHMC commissioner, Somesh Kumar.” However, during the upcoming GHMC polls, the Congress will carefully monitor this whole process of delimitation, enumeration of BC voters and reservations to prevent the government from making it unfairly advantageous for themselves.