Siddipet to become corporation soon

Hyderabad: Telangana state will soon have 40 more new municipalities with the state government deciding to upgrade gram panchayats with more than 15,000 population into municipalities. The Siddipet municipality will become municipal corporation, according to the officials in Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration (CDMA).

According to them, Telangana has almost 50 per cent urban population. As per the Samagra Kutumba Survey, the state has 46 per cent urban population. There are 300 major gram panchayats in the state and of them about 40 to 50 have features making them eligible to become urban local bodies.

An official informed that for the gram panchayats to be upgraded into municipalities, they should adopt a resolution or it would automatically get upgraded after the completion of the term of the elected body
of the gram panchayats.

The official told The Hans India that there was a general perception among the people that taxes were bound to increase if the gram panchayats and municipalities are upgraded. 

But for people, there would be benefits also as the funding from the government increases which helps in providing facilities like drinking water and sanitation.The property value also gets increased and as per the 14 the Finance Commission, the ULBs would get more per capita grants, the official said.

“We expect requests from over 40 gram panchayats to be upgraded into ULBs. Already 22 GPs have adopted and sent resolutions for upgrading as ULBs,” the official said, adding that most of the new ULBs would take shape during this year as term of the GPs will be ending in June 2018.

An official of CDMA said that the some of the municipalities would be taking shape of corporation. The official said that the special grade municipality Siddipet is slated to become a corporation as it has all the pre-requisites to become a municipal corporation.

The government would soon increase its periphery by including the nearby villages for forming the corporation.

Mahbubnagar Municipality also has the features to become a corporation and soon decision would be taken to merge the nearby villages, the official added. District headquarter towns, including Peddapally, Nagarkurnool and Asifabad would also become municipalities in due course of time.