HC notice to state EC, civic body over ward formation manipulation

Aurangabad: The Aurangabad bench of Bombay high court on Thursday issued notices to the state election commission (SEC), Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), state government and other authorities following a petition challenging the legality, propriety and correctness of illegal delimitation and ward formation for the upcoming civic elections.
The petitioner, Sameer Rajurkar, a former corporator, has moved court challenging the ward formation process and accusing the authorities concerned of manipulating population ratio in at least 28 wards and reserving wards for SC/STs to help some political leaders.
He also pointed out that false records were prepared and the wards were abruptly changed.
The petition said: “Population of municipal area is required to be divided into 115 wards and thus the ratio of population per ward comes to 10,769. A difference of 10% is permissible in this ratio. Thus, maximum population limit per ward is 11,747 whereas the minimum is 9,611. As population per ward has nexus with reservation of seats of SC/ST, the EC has directed that only in exceptional case, the ratio of population can cross the minimum or maximum limit. However, during the current ward formation, due to interference of political persons, this ratio of population per ward has been violated in 21 places. The entire ward formation and consequent reservation is thus tampered with in 80 wards.’’
It added: “The reservation of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe is required to be carried out in a descending order. For that purpose, the ratio of total population of ward with the ST and SC population is taken into consideration. The data is then submitted to the SEC in schedule 6 and 7 by the AMC. All the wards are arranged in a descending order on the basis of the percentage of SC and ST population. The wards which were reserved earlier are excluded and then other wards are reserved in the descending order. However, while tampering with the SC/ST reservation a mischief is played.”
Following the petition, the high court bench — comprising justices SV Gangapurwala and Shrikant Kulkarni — ordered issuance of notices to the respondents while posting the next hearing on March 5.