Reservations in tune with rules: Mohanty

hyderabad: the reservations to the ensuing elections to the municipal corporation of hyderabad (mch) were finalised based on the 74th amendment to the constitution, article 243 t and rules framed by the state government with regard to bc reservations in the local bodies. explaining the criteria adopted in finalising the reservations, mch commissioner p k mohanty said as per the rule 9 of municipal corporation (reservation of seats), 1995, the reservation of seats for members belonging to scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and women in the mch limits should be made with reference to largest percentage of population of the said category to the total population of the ward in descending order.compared to the previous mch elections, this time reservations were provided to bcs and the percentage of reservations to women has been enhanced from 15 to 34 per cent.though the constitution provides 15 and 6 per cent reservations for scs and sts respectively, going by the percentage of scs to the total population as per 1991 census, the officials reserved only eight wards to scs and one to sts. the sc population in the mch area is 8.44 lakh and st population 0.91 lakh. the mch commissioner argued that political leaders were unable to understand the rules in various acts passed by themselves. "any changes in the reservations requires an amendment to the act, which only the assembly or parliament can do," he said. the bjp leaders have pointed out to the mch officials that 2,830 residents of manikeshwari nagar were included in the mch voters list and requested for deletion of their names as they belonged to uppal municipality. however, the mch officials have rejected the suggestion as they said that while conducting elections, the entire corporation would be taken as single unit as per the rules.