New Sivakasi Corporation to have 48 wards

Representatives of political parties from erstwhile Sivakasi and Tiruthangal municipal areas were divided over the number of wards to be allocated for their respective areas after delimitation of wards upon upgrading the merged urban local bodies into Sivakasi Corporation.

At a public hearing on delimitation of wards held here by the Delimitation Commission, led by its Chairman, V. Palanikumar, its member secretary, A. Sundaravalli, representatives of various political parties demanded either higher number of wards for their areas or to retain the existing number of wards.

Its member and Commissioner of Municipal Administration, P. Ponniah, said that the number of wards for the newly-formed Sivakasi municipality has been fixed at 48 as per Delimitation Act 2017 as the population of the new Corporation was less than 3 lakh.

While Sivakasi municipality had 33 wards and Tiruthangal municipality 21 wards, as per the delimitation exercise, the areas under both the former municipalities will have 24 wards each.

As the officials explained that 900 to 920 households formed each ward, the representatives from Sivakasi wanted to have population or voter population as the basis for ward delimitation.

S. Sermadurai of the Congress said that the population and voter population in Sivakasi was much higher than that of Tiruthangal and hence 33 wards for Sivakasi area should be retained and remaining 15 wards should be given to Tiruthangal.

Countering his argument, M.R. Sethuraman of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said that Tiruthangal municipal area had bigger geographical area (13 sq km) while Sivakasi had only 8 sq km.

“Tiruthangal municipal area had huge potential for expansion of residential areas in the years to come while Sivakasi town had saturated. Hence, the number of 24 wards for Tiruthangal was justified,” he said.

Similar, arguments were made by representatives of other political parties also.

Representatives from Indian National League, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Puratchi Bharatham, and others insisted that the ward delimitation should ensure that the vote base of minoritiets and Scheduled Castes were not disturbed.

They wanted reservation of additional wards for the oppressed classes.

Meanwhile, to a question of why the nine panchayats around Sivakasi and Tiruthangal, which were planned to be included in the Sivakasi Corporation were not included now, the Collector, J. Meghanath Reddy clarified that it would be done later.

He told the Bharatiya Janata Party functionary Venkatesh that since the elected representatives of those panchayats had more than three years of tenure, those panchayats would be added later.

Some of the representatives complained that their wards were not compact and streets and residential areas in far off places were included in their wards and sought to reconsider the decision.

The officials said that suggestions and objections on delimitation exercise of Sivakasi municipality would be received till December 24.

D. Kumaran of Congress complained that the details and map of delimited Sivakasi Corporation were not given to the representatives on time and sought more time for them to respond.

- The Hindu