VIJAYAWADA: Elections to the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) will be conducted only for the 59 divisions of the city as the 53 villages that are proposed to be merged with the civic body have not yet been included in the voters’ list which are being prepared by the civic body’s town planning department officials for polls to be held after June.
“The civic body staff are preparing the voters list covering 59 divisions under three Assembly constituencies as the tenure of ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) will come to an end on July 3. In all, the officials have prepared a preliminary list of 7.78 lakh voters. They have been instructed to include names of eligible voters without fail,” said VMC commissioner M Rama Rao.
The municipal department has directed the civic body to complete the voters list of 59 divisions by May 1, VMC officials said.On the other hand, sources said that the state government has issued a GO instructing VMC to halt the process to merge 53 villages with the VMC until 2022.
The state government had directed the civic body to conduct a ground level survey in 53 villages in and around Vijayawada which were supposed to be merged with the urban agglomeration as ‘Greater Vijayawada’, VMC officials revealed.
After a series of meetings, the village panchayats gave their nod to the merger with Vijayawada after getting assurance of all-round development. VMC drafted the merger proposal as a report in October last year and submitted it to the state government seeking its nod to speed up the process to achieve ‘Greater Vijayawada’ status.