MVA’s civic delimitation exercise to be scrapped

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde will scrap the delimitation exercise undertaken by the former Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government of civic body wards across Maharashtra, particularly in the Mumbai and Thane civic municipalities, First India has learnt.

The ward delimitations put in place by the MVA government, to customize and remap local wards in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), were aimed at realigning the wards to benefit the Shiv Sena in the forthcoming civil polls. It may be recalled that a miffed MVA alliance partner, the Congress, had threatened to approach the Mumbai High Court against the delimitation exercise carried out by the Shiv Sena-led government only months before the civic elections were to be held. “The Shiv Sena had redrawn Mumbai’s civic map so as to benefit from--hold your breath- -Muslim votes that hold considerable sway over at least 52 city councillor seats across the 26 civic wards in Mumbai city,” a person close to the development told First India. Similarly in Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) the Shinde-led government will retweak the ward alignment so as to benefit the current political dispensation that had been deliberately undermined by the erstwhile MVA government. Another significant political plan of the BJPsupported and Shindeled alliance government will be to submit empirical data on the other backward castes (OBC) communities in Maharashtra before the civic elections slated to be held in 22 municipalities shortly. As many as 20 of these have been under an administrator for over two years now. This would also result in the reservations in these civic bodies probably undergoing a change which would necessitate a further delay of around six months before these elections may be held.