The total number of MCD seats comes down to 250

A notification published in the Delhi Gazette on Saturday stated that the total number of seats of MCD is fixed at 250, which was previously 272.

Forty two seats are allotted for members of the Scheduled Castes in the MCD, according to a calculation that took their number into account.

There were 272 wards in Delhi’s previous three corporations. The East corporation had 64 wards under its control, compared to 104 wards each for the North and South corporations.

The notification stated that in pursuance of sub-section (5) of section 3 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957, as amended by the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022, the Central government determined the total number of seats of the Councillors in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi as 250.

The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill-2022, which limited the total number of wards to 250, was passed by Parliament on April 5 in order to merge three civic bodies into a single unified organisation in the nation’s capital.

A three-member commission was established in July by the Union Home Ministry to carry out a new delimitation of Delhi’s municipal wards.

The currently ongoing activity will prepare the ground for Delhi’s first civic elections following the recent amalgamation of three corporations.

The panel’s members include Randhir Sahay, Additional Commissioner, MCD, Pankaj Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Vijay Dev, State Election Commissioner, Delhi.

The civic authority had stated in July that the commission will deliver its report within four months of its inception.

With IAS officers Ashwani Kumar and Gyanesh Bharti taking over as the new civic body’s special officer and commissioner, respectively, the reunified MCD had officially been established on May 22.

The former MCD, founded in 1958, was divided into three regions in 2012, while Sheila Dikshit served as chief minister. North, South, and East Delhi Municipal Corporations, also known as NDMC, SDMC, and EDMC, were recently merged to form a new civic organisation.

Experts had predicted in July that since the redrawing of civic wards is a “extensive exercise,” the local elections are unlikely to happen before 2023.

(With inputs from PTI)

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