Legal hassles push AMC to withdraw from formation of prabhags

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad, Oct 11:

The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has sent a letter to the State Election Commission (SEC) underlining that the Supreme Court has granted a 'status quo' in connection with a petition filed challenging the delimitation of wards. The matter is sub judice, therefore, the orders of SEC to form prabhags could not be further implemented till the final verdict on the case is not given by the Apex Court. Deputy commissioner Santosh Tengale confirmed the correspondence with the SEC.

Earlier, the state government has decided to conduct the forthcoming elections in the municipal corporations as per the prabhag comprising a three-member panel. Accordingly, the SEC issued a letter to all municipal corporations with guidelines on conducting the civic elections, on October 5. It had also ordered to send the rough draft of the newly formed prabhags for final approval.

It may be noted that the former corporator Sameer Rajurkar and others had challenged the reserved wards (socially) and delimitation of wards by Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in the Apex Court and it had granted a 'status quo' in the case. Hence the petitioners served a notice to SEC stating that it would be an attempt of Supreme Court's order if the process of forming prabhag is started as per its order. On other hand, the AMC has formed a committee to prepare the rough draft of the new prabhags. Now, it has been realised that the implementation of the election process till the final verdict of the Supreme Court (in this case) is not possible. Hence the AMC sent a notice to SEC and informed about stopping of the work. We have also sought further guidance in the issue, said Tengale.

Revision of Assembly Voters List (AVL)

The AMC will be implementing the election programme like revising of assembly wise voters list from November 1 to 30. The revenue administration has sought help from us in this special brief revision programme. Accordingly, the zonal offices will be utilised as Common Service Centres (CSC), said Tengale.

Final till Jan 2022

As per the chief electoral officer (CEO), the citizens completing the age of 18 years (new voters) on January 1, 2022, will be included and the names of departed souls will be deleted in the revision of the voters list.