Finally, the veil of secrecy surrounding the Prabhag map will be lifted on Saturday as Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is going to make it public. The map will also be displayed on NMC's website for reaching out to citizens at large. The map will showcase the boundaries of the Prabhag that are formed for the ensuing elections to new House of the civic body. NMC is going to past the Prabhag map on display board at its lawn that would allow all to take a look at the same. The draft of Prabhag is open to scrutiny of citizens till September 4 and during that period they can file their objections, if any, with Election Branch of NMC.

 

The objections will be accepted till 3 pm at the 10 Zonal Headquarters also and citizens will have to give explanation as to their objections on the Prabhag map that shows the boundaries of the area that are coming under the same, said the notification released by Municipal Commissioner and Administrator Dr Abhijeet Chaudhari.

 

Though the base for redrawing the Prabhag was kept as 2024 assembly elections, but the increase of voters by over one lakh means the boundaries of last polls of NMC are bound to get changed to some extent. So each of the Prabhag will have voter population of around 65,000 but the principle of ensuing no disconnect of areas must have been maintained. The most critical aspect of fixing a Prabhag boundary is ward enumeration and that exercise was formidably carried in year 2017 when the 4 member Prabhag system was introduced in NMC.

 

Then each Prabahg had just 40,000 voters whose number has increased substantially and hence the boundaries might get reworked to a large extent, feels the aspirants. The number of corporators would however remain unchaged at 151, the same as was in the last House. Since last three-years the House is not in session was NMC is under charge of Administrators. The long gap in the general elections to municipal corporaiton was due to legal challenge over reservation for other backward classes (OBCs). Only after Supreme Court decided the objection, the election exercise got into motion with polls likely to be held sometimes after Diwali.