The Hindu : Number of Assembly segments may rise to 23

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 21, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Pondicherry

Number of Assembly segments may rise to 23

By Our Staff Reporter

Pondicherry June 20. Pondicherry region's entitlement of Assembly seats might go up from present 21 to 23 constituencies, the Chairman of the Delimiation Commission, Justice Kuldip Singh has said.

Addressing newsmen here today at the end of three-day session he, the Election Commissioner, B. B. Tandon and the Legal Adviser to the Election Commission, S. K. Mendiratta had with the party leaders, legislators, officials of the Elections Department and also the associate members of delimitation panel, Mr. Justice Kuldip Singh said that with a view to rectifying the disparity between constituencies in respect of size of population and to maintain average level in the segments on the basis of the provisional population figures for 2001 the Delimitation Commission had proposed that the Union Territory of Pondicherry (having a total of 30 Assembly seats) might have the entitlement of seats region wise as detailed below:

In Pondicherry region, the number of seats might go up from present 21 to 23, while Karaikal would have five seats (one seat less than the present figure of six segments), Mahe one (instead of two) and Yanam would continue to have status quo with one seat.

Mr. Kuldip Singh said that the purpose of delimitation was to ensure that all the Assembly constituencies had an equal average level on the basis of population figures.

Last delimitation was done in 1976 and since then the population of Union Territory had risen very substantially.

The 1971 census on the basis of which the last delimitation was done projected a population of 4,71,707 in the Union Territory of Pondicherry and provisional census figures for 2001 now showed population of 9,73,829 here.

The average population per Assembly seat in 1971 was 15,724 and now it had shot up to 32,461 per seat.

Replying to a question he said that full details of what new two constituencies would come into being and other particulars would be known only when final figure of census population was available.

The representatives of parties, who turned up for deliberations with the Delimitation Commission here, were very cooperative, the Chairman said. Divergent views were expressed by the parties with some pleading for maintenance of status quo in respect of region wise number of constituencies without any alteration and some other parties urged adoption of equality in size of constituencies and the average population.

There was a plea for rectification of disparity in all the features of the segments.

Mr. Tandon paid rich compliments to the excellent work the Chief Electoral Officer B Vijayan (who was also present at press conference) and the Union Territory Administration had done to prepare and distribute the Electoral Photo Identity Cards in the Union Territory as per schedule. The coverage was around 99.46 percent and only 3364 voters remained to be issued the identity cards.

The State Election Commissioner, N. Rajasekhar who was also present said that as far as the SEC was concerned it was prepared to hold civic polls as all the relevant works including publication of updated voters lists for the municipal wards had also been completed.

The Chairman of the Delimitation Commission and other members of the team held discussions with the associate members of the commission: M. O. H. Farook MP (Congress) R Nalamaharajan, N. Gangadharan and V Vaithilingam (all Congress MLAs), S.P. Sivakumar (DMK) and A M Krishnamoorthy (BJP).

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