Constituency data not yet available

Thousands of voters in the city still do not know the assembly constituencies as many wards fall in two constituencies. Neither the
district administration nor the Nagpur Municipal Corporation has data to help them out even though Delimitation Commission of India (DCI) had issued a gazette notification in 2006.

The root of the problem is that DCI, which is a wing of Election Commission, carved out the six assembly constituencies on the basis of NMC ward boundaries fixed in 1997. However, the state election commission (SEC) then changed the ward boundaries for 2007 civic elections.

A senior revenue department officer told TOI that the district administration had appealed to SEC to fix the ward boundaries keeping the assembly constituency boundaries in mind. However, SEC went out its task without taking assembly constituencies into consideration. As a result several wards were split between two assembly constituencies. Many cases just 10% area of a ward was in one constituency while 90% was in another. One such example is the Shaniwari ward.

TOI sought information from the district collectorate regarding the boundaries of the assembly constituencies but the staffers said that they did not have it. They said that they had been given colored maps of the constituencies on A4 size paper but due to their small size boundaries could not be found out. “When we are able to decipher these maps what will do you with it. Why waste 300 rupees on it,” a staffer said.

Collectorate Officials said that as constituency boundaries were fixed on basis of 1997 ward boundaries NMC would have the necessary information. However, NMC election officer Ravindra Page told TOI that his office only had the maps of the existing wards. “You can try the archives department. May be they have those maps,” he said.