The draft list and boundary details of wards of Madurai Corporation and three municipalities in the district as per the recently completed delimitation exercise were released here on Friday by Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao in the presence of representatives from political parties.
Similar details for town panchayats and other rural local bodies were released on Wednesday by the district administration.
Pointing out that the delimitation exercise was carried out based on the population data of 2011 Census, Mr. Rao said changes were made in the boundaries of wards within local bodies although the total number of wards remained the same.
“Madurai Corporation will continue to have 100 wards. However, the boundaries of the wards have changed so as to evenly distribute the population among them,” he said.
“For instance, Madurai Corporation had 14.69 lakh population as per 2011 Census and the average population per ward was 14,690. Around 10% variation could be there in some wards since there are situations where we cannot split one street between two wards,” he added.
Stating that the same applied to other municipalities, town panchayats and village panchayats, he said boundaries of the district panchayat wards and panchayat union wards had also undergone change. He, however, stressed that the overall boundaries of the corporation, three municipalities, nine town panchayats and 420 village panchayats remained unchanged. The Collector said representatives of political parties and public could submit objections or concerns, if any, in writing by January 2, 2017 (for rural local bodies) and January 4 (for Madurai Corporation and municipalities).
Representatives of political parties present at the meeting, however, expressed concern that the duration given was too short for them to go through the details and suggest changes. V. Velusamy, former DMK MLA, said at least 10 days’ time should be given.
The Collector, however, said the schedule was decided at the State level and he could only recommend to the authorities an extension of deadline.
When some raised a doubt whether the exercise was carried out based on the number of households or property tax collected in each ward, the Collector said it was done based on population.
