50% quota for women in municipal polls

Hyderabad: For the first time, all the poll-bound 120 municipalities and 10 municipal corporations in the State would be going to polls with 50 per cent reservation for women.

While the political parties are jittery over finalisation of candidates, the authorities maintained the entire process of finalisation of reservation of wards for women will be undertaken in transparent manner.

Senior officials of the Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration (CDMA) said that the municipal elections were being conducted as per the new Municipal Act which had come into force this year.

Under the new Act, 50 per cent of the wards in every municipality would be reserved for women. To ensure transparency, reservation of wards would be done locally by the district collectors.

In the previous municipal elections held in 2013, only 33 per cent reservation was provided to women.

Officials said that under the new reservation policy, the government authorities will finalise the reservation for BCs, SCs and STs in the election-bound wards.

After that, the reserved wards will be accommodated to women through the lottery system.

For instance, officials said that if there are two wards reserved for Schedule Castes (SCs) in a municipality one of the wards would be reserved for women. If there is only one ward reserved for SCs, women reservation will not be applicable under the new Municipal Act.

This has made the political parties jittery over the finalisation of reservation of wards as they would have to wait till January 5 before finalising the candidates. Leaders said that the number of aspirants to contest the elections in every ward is increasing day by day.

The parties will also not be able to launch poll campaign seriously until the reservation of wards is finalised. TRS is preparing to announce the candidates on the same day the Municipal authorities announce reservation of wards.

As per the draft voters' list released by the SEC (State Election Commission), the total number of voters are 53,37,260 including 26,64,885 female and 354 other category voters.

The SEC would issue notification on January 7 and nominations can be filed till January 10. Scrutiny of nominations would be taken up on January 11, last date for withdrawal of candidature would be January 14.

Polling would be held on January 22 and counting would take place on January 25.