The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has set up a three-member commission for carrying out a fresh delimitation exercise of the municipal wards in Delhi, according to a statement issued by the MCD on Saturday.

The exercise will pave the way for the civic polls in Delhi, which would be the first since the recent reunification of the city's three corporations.

"Taking a step forward in the direction of holding municipal elections, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, by exercising its powers under sections 3, 3A and 5 of the DMC Act, 1957, has constituted a delimitation commission to assist central government in delimitation of wards and carrying out other functions related to it," the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) said in a statement.

It said the panel will have three members -- Vijay Dev, State Election Commissioner, Delhi, who will be its chairman, Pankaj Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Randhir Sahay, Additional Commissioner, MCD.

The commission will present its report within four months of its formation, the civic body said.

The reunified MCD formally came into existence on May 22 with IAS officers Ashwani Kumar and Gyanesh Bharti assuming charge as its special officer and commissioner respectively.

The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was trifurcated in 2012 during Sheila Dikshit's tenure as the chief minister. It was recently reunified by merging the three civic bodies -- North, South and East Delhi municipal corporations or NDMC, SDMC and EDMC.

Parliament passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022 on April 5 to unify the three civic bodies in the national capital, with the Rajya Sabha giving its nod through a voice vote after negating all the amendments sought by the opposition.

According to the bill, the unification of the municipal corporations will ensure synergised and strategic planning and optimal utilisation of resources.

Sources at the State Election Commission here had earlier said after the passage of the bill to reunify the three municipal corporations, the civic polls were likely to be delayed by about a year.

The polls were earlier slated to be held in April.

Since the bill talks about capping the number of wards at 250, the Centre will form a delimitation commission after it is passed by both houses of Parliament, the sources had said.

The delimitation commission will then start the exercise to reorganise the municipal wards in accordance with the population of the respective Assembly segments.

"The delimitation exercise alone will take around six-seven months. After it is completed, the commission's report has to be notified by the Centre and then the process of rotation of wards and other poll exercises will start. It is likely to take about a year to conduct the municipal election in Delhi," a source had said soon after the passage of the bill.

Delhi presently has 70 Assembly segments.

The three erstwhile corporations comprised 272 wards -- 104 each in the North and South corporations and 64 in the East corporation.

Dismissing the opposition's charge that the ruling dispensation at the Centre had brought the bill out of fear of losing the civic polls, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during a discussion in Parliament in April, had said the BJP had no such phobia and was ready to contest the election soon after delimitation.?

(With PTI inputs)
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