State Election Commissioner V. Nagi Reddy has issued notification to conduct election for Siddipet Municipality. Election will be held on April 6 and counting on April 11. The Municipal Commissioner will be the returning officer for elections and election code has come into force, but would be limited to municipal limits.
Disclosing these details here on Sunday District Election Officer and Collector D. Ronald Rose said that nominations can be filed from March 21 till March 23 and scrutiny will be held on March 24 and nominations can be withdrawn on March 25. As many as 84 polling centres would be established in 34 wards. It was identified that 22 polling stations were hyper sensitive and 35 are sensitive.
With High Court striking off the petition filed by the residents of six villages surrounding Siddipet, the constituency headquarters being represented by Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao, questioning their merger in the municipality, the way was cleared for conducting the local body elections.
The Siddipet mandal headquarters town spread in about 4 square kilometres would be expanding to 36 square km and the number of wards would increase from the existing 32 to 34. Reorganisation of wards and re-sizing them was stated to be one of the reasons for small increase in number of wards.
The villages that were merged in Siddipet municipality include – Prashant Nagar, Hanuman Nagar, Narsapur Gadicharlapaly, Imambad and Rangadhampally. The Panchayatraj Department issued orders on October 14, 2104, merging these villages in the Siddipet municipality and since then the administration went into the municipality.
However, some of the residents from these villages had approached the Hyderabad High Court challenging the merger. In the judgement delivered on Friday, the High Court gave judgemet in favour of the Government and struck off the petitions filed against merger.
As per the sensus of 2011, the population of Siddipet was 64,944 and it was stated that the present population was 1,11,358. It was informed that the population would swell to 1.4 lakh with the merger of these villages. With this, the hurdles were cleared for the conduct of elections for Siddipet Municipality.
“The villages will now have a regular water supply, sanitation, engineering and revenue officials available for better services. There will be development as well in all these villages on par with Siddipet. In addition to getting new roads, these villages will have the opportunity to be part of using special development funds,” K.V. Ramanachary, Siddipet Municipal Commissioner told The Hindu.
