HYDERABAD: As the tenure of the current 15-member Standing Committee of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) ends on November 14, the corporators are all set to elect a new panel through ballot on November 19.The city body issued the election notification on Tuesday, calling upon the 150 corporators to elect 15 members to the new Standing Committee.
As per the election notification, the GHMC will accept nominations from the corporators between November 2 and November 10, excluding public holidays on November 6 and 8. The list of valid nominations will be published on November 10 and the scrutiny of nominations will take place on November 11.
Last date for withdrawal is November 14 and the final list of contesting candidates will be published on the same day after 3 pm. Polling will be held from 10 am to 3 pm on November 19 and counting of votes will take place at GHMC head office after 3 pm on the same day.
The 15-member committee, headed by the Mayor, is the apex body of GHMC that takes important policy decisions. It may be mentioned here that all the development works worth between Rs 2-3 crore have to be approved by this committee while works of less than Rs 2 crore are to be approved by the GHMC Commissioner or Zonal Commissioners. For works ranging from Rs 3-6 crore, proposals should be placed in the council meeting and if the cost of works exceed Rs 6 crore they should be sent to the State government for approval.
Like last year, the members are likely to be elected unanimously this time too as the TRS and its ally AIMIM have majority of corporators in the GHMC and they are likely to share the seats between themselves. Like last year, the Standing Committee is likely to have eight members from the TRS and remaining seven from the AIMIM.
For the record, after the previous election, the GHMC had TRS has 56 members, AIMIM 44, BJP 47 and Congress 3. However, a few months ago, four BJP corporators joined TRS in the presence of TRS working president KT Rama Rao.
The GHMC officials informed TNIE that as per the Act, the Standing Committee should consist of not fewer than five and not more than 15 members at the rate of one member for 10 wards. Since the GHMC has 150 wards, it will have 15 members, at the rate of one member for 10 wards.
The members of this committee will hold office for a period of one year from the date of election subject to first provision under Clause (b) of 93 of the Act.