HYDERABAD: Similar to Ward Committee nominations fiasco, differences between corporators and MLAs prevailed over the nomination of members to areas sabhas on Thursday. A special council meeting of GHMC was convened here on Thursday to nominate as many as 1,347 as area sabha members, about 50 per cent of them were nominated as there was no objection either from the MLAs or the corporators. The nominated names will be known in a day or two. Based on the population in the wards, each ward should have 8 to 10 area sabha representatives, but when the standing committee members read the names of the members to be nominated, only one to four names were read out and remaining were left out.
Last minute parleys were held by the elected representatives over nomination of members to area sabhas but failed to reach consensus and only handful of them who are found non controversial were picked from the ward. The special meeting which started at around 10 am got delayed by two and half hours because of non-finalisation of members. The meeting started at around 12.30 pm and was wrapped up in less than 40 minutes after the names were read out.
During the last ward committee nominations, open differences prevailed between corporators and MLAs over the nomination of members. As many as 1,437 applications were received for nomination of 1,347 area sabha representatives in 146 wards out of 150 wards of GHMC. For remaining four wards Khairatabad, Vengal Rao Nagar, Miyapur and Mylardevpally wards constitution of areas sabhas were put on hold as there are no ward committees in place in respect to above four wards. Only after ward committees are constituted, area sabhas can be constituted.
The last special meeting of Corporation which was held on July 3 for constitution of area Sabhas belonging to civil societies could not take place due to lack of quorum and the meeting was adjourned.
For 10 wards, no applications were received, they include Chilkanagar, Musheerabad, Bholakpur, Tarnaka, Gandhinagar, Addagutta, Mettuguda, Seethafalmandi, Basnsilapet and Monda Market and for few wards response was lukewarm and for some it was heavy. Of the 1,437 applications, 1,034 are men and 403 are women. Area sabhas, consisting of electors in that area, have to be constituted in all the wards within three months from the date of constituting a ward committee. The 150 GHMC wards have been divided into 1,347 areas based on the population of the ward at the rate 5,000 population for each area.
An ordinary meeting was also held were discussion with regard to replacing of LEDs with conventional streetlights was discussed. In another two months, 4.60 lakh conventional streetlights will be replaced with LEDs, Mayor said. The LED project is taken up by EESL and the contract workers numbering to 700 will not be affected said the Commissioner. Under the SC, ST Sub plan, GHMC would utilsie 50 per cent sub plan funds for development of wards. So far under ST/ SC sub plan, the GHMC has sanctioned `94.05 crore for 30 works, said the Commissioner.