Newly formed ad-hoc panel to oversee delimitation of wards in Gurugram, says MCG

Gurugram: The directorate of urban local bodies (DULB) has formed a four-member ad-hoc committee to oversee the delimitation of wards for the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), said officials on Tuesday. The MCG presently has 35 municipal wards. Last year, 16 areas and villages around the Golf Course Extension Road (GCER) and the Dwarka Expressway were added to the jurisdiction of the MCG.

According to MCG officials, the committee will have to decide whether the total number of municipal wards in the city needs to be increased, following the expansion of the MCG limits and an increase in the city’s population. According to an order issued by DULB’s principal secretary Arun Gupta, Gurugram’s deputy commissioner (DC) is the chairman of the ad-hoc committee. The three other members of the committee are the DULB director, mayor, and MCG commissioner.

“In accordance with the Haryana Municipal Corporation Delimitation of Ward Rules, 1994, an ad-hoc committee has to be formed six months before the completion of the tenure of the existing councillors. Following the expansion of area under the jurisdiction of the MCG, the process for delimiting wards need to be carried out again,” said Madhu Azad, mayor of MCG. The tenure of the existing 35 municipal councillors will end on November 2 this year.

The Haryana Municipal Corporation Delimitation of Wards Rules, 1994, state “any city with a population between 800,000 (0.8 million) and 1,000,000 (1 million) can have a maximum of 32 municipal wards”.

During a meeting in October last year, MCG commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja directed senior officials of the civic body to hire a private agency to conduct surveys in all its wards by March 2022. In the survey, the agency was asked to collect data on caste, blocks, and maps following a door-to-door assessment.

“The survey by the private agency is underway. Due to the increase in the jurisdiction area and a rise in the city’s population, the municipal wards are likely to increase from 35 to 37, and accordingly, territorial maps of each ward will have to be revised,” said a senior MCG official privy to the matter, requesting anonymity.

Azad also said that the committee will scrutinise each of the areas under the MCG limits individually to ensure that issues faced by the citizens are accounted for. The DULB order was issued last Friday, and received by the MCG officials on Monday.

According to officials, due to a difference in the 2011 census and an MCG survey of the city’s population, the delimitation of wards became a major issue in 2016. Following this, the MCG election was deferred for nearly 17 months, and Gurugram did not have councillors until November 2017.

According to the 2011 census, the city’s population was around 900,000 (0.9 million), while the MCG’s survey pegged it at 115,000,000 (1.15 million). Later, an ad-hoc committee found out that the population in the city was above 1,000,000 (1 million), ensuring that the total number of MCG wards could continue to remain at 35.