The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has submitted 285 observations from hearings on the proposed KMC ward delimitation to West Bengal’s urban development and municipal affairs department, after political parties and individuals raised objections over booth shifts, missing booths and revised ward boundaries.
The delimitation proposal would increase the number of KMC wards from the current 144 to 209. The observations were prepared by hearing officers after four days of hearings on objections and suggestions filed against the state’s draft decision.
A KMC official said the hearing officers, all West Bengal Civil Service executive officers, prepared reports after listening to each person who appeared before them. The reports were submitted to the state urban development and municipal affairs department after the hearings ended on Wednesday.
Several objections concerned the movement of polling booths from one ward to another and, in some cases, from one Assembly constituency to a neighbouring constituency. Such changes were among the issues examined during the hearings on the proposed revised ward structure.
Kasba MLA Javed Khan told The Times of India that two booths from Ward 66 were missing from both the Kasba and neighbouring Entally Assembly constituencies. A Communist Party of India (Marxist) functionary separately claimed that booths were missing in 23 wards.
A KMC official acknowledged that omissions could have occurred while preparing the draft list of booths assigned to each ward. The official said that missing booths and other errors were corrected after they were pointed out during the process or identified during internal reviews of the documents.
The submission now places the hearing officers’ conclusions before the state urban development and municipal affairs department, which is examining the objections and suggestions linked to the proposed increase in the number of KMC wards. The material submitted by the corporation includes the observations recorded during the hearings and the corrections made to the draft booth and ward details.
