After wrapping up the week-long State Legislature’s Winter Session schedule, the machinery of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is gearing up for another gruelling work, the elections for municipal corporation. State Election Commission has launched a month-long programme to ensure that everything is properly prepared for the upcoming civic elections. Since it is being held after a gap of nearly 9 years, the ground staff has its task cut out as the landscape has undergone rapid change, that has put up different challenges for the machinery.

 

 

 

The most challenging task for the NMC officials was finding adequate number of voting booth due to rise in voter base. The release of NMC election schedule capped the intense speculation that was on since last one month that due to overshooting of reservation limit, it might get delayed further. But the SEC stuck to Supreme Court directions to complete local body polls before January 31. The corporation election schedule is finalised keeping in mind the next date of hearing on reservation in Apex Court, January 21. So in case any changes are to be done, same would be based on outcome of the order. Therefore, the entire exercise is sought to be completed before the next hearing, said the political observers. Meanwhile, the development works are going to take a back seat as model code of conduct came into force with announcement of election schedule for corporation. But that did not stop politicians from beating the deadline as city saw mega bhoomipujan and inauguration function for the development works.

 

 

At NMC, about 38 Prabhags are set to elect 151 ward members to represent them in the House. Each of the Prabhag, barring no 38, will have four members, while the last one will be having 3 members in fray. Now the political parties are set to speed up the process to select the candidates and finalise the alliances as campaigning time is quite limited for the aspirants. In fact, the political workers on the ground say, the NMC election saga makes a wonderful book, as it has been on and off mode for last many years. Due to same, many of the aspirants have ended-up spending quite a big sum on making themselves visible in their respective areas. Since last 4 years, the ex-corporators and many new aspirants now crowd the little space and hence intense lobbying would be witnessed in major political parties for securing the nominations. 

 

 

As happens all the time, a heavy rush was witnessed in corridors of NMC to beat the announcement of election schedule. Since for next one month, the entire bureaucracy would be busy with election programme, many stakeholders were seen at different offices. But majority of crowd was that of contractors whose turn up was in record numbers to conclude the tendering and get the work orders. Many of them were for other purpose to complete the details of filing the details relating to work done.

 

 

About 24,83,112 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise on January 15 in the civic elections slated to be held after a gap of nearly three-and-half years. The terms of last elected body came to an end on March 3, 2022, and as per norms, the new House of NMC should have been constituted well before that. But the same got delayed due to imbroglio over OBC reservation and same deprived the voters to choose their elected representatives. Since then, NMC and other corporations were under Administrator rule, the respective Municipal Commissioner overseeing the administrative affairs. As per the voting machinery, about 3300 booths are going to be set up for holding the elections. On an average, each of the Prabhag (4-member) is going to have over 70,000 voters while Prabhag 38 is going to have lowest, below 50,000 as it is having only 3-member panel for election. Each of the booth is going to have a control unit and a ballot unit with latter having capacity to display names of 16 contestants. In case the number of contestants increase, then additional ballot unit will need to be affixed. So post filing of nominations and withdrawal, in case each of the Prabhag has just 4 nominations then only one ballot unit would do. But same is least possibility as the field may get crowded due to many small political parties and last but not the least many independent candidates.