NEW DELHI: Among the 250 freshly redrawn municipal wards of the unified civic corporation in Delhi, half of them have been reserved for women including 42 that are kept for the Scheduled Caste community, as per the notification issued by the Delhi State Election Commission.
Among the 42 SC community seats, 21 are reserved for women belonging to this community. Meanwhile, 108 out of the remaining 208 seats will be reserved for women candidates. A detailed list with the number of wards reserved for both categories was published in the gazette notification.
“As many as 42 wards are reserved for persons belonging to the Scheduled Caste category on the basis of the highest percentage of SC population in those wards,” State Election Commissioner Vijay Dev said.
“The 42 wards reserved for the SC, not less than 21 wards have to be reserved for SC women,” he added.
Section 3 of the Delhi Municipal Act 1957 says, “Seats shall be reserved for women belonging to SCs, from among the seats reserved for scheduled castes, which shall not be less than one-half of the total number of seats reserved for SCs.”
Section 3 of the Act also provides that seats shall be reserved for women, which shall not be less than one-half of the total number of seats other than those reserved for Scheduled Castes.
Officials said the move is a step to hold civic polls which are likely by December. The announcement of reserved wards will pave the way for pre-election preparatory work as the viable candidates will start pushing for the ticket from the three key political parties based on the status of the wards.