TS mulling over new municipalities formation

     Written by : SMTV24x7 | Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 03:50 AM

TS mulling over new municipalities formation

Hyderabad, October 18 : Following the governments orders, the municipal officials are conducting a survey on the possibility of setting up municipalities with mandal headquarters as the centre.

After the new districts formation,a single municipality came under the limits of one district among the new 10 districts. This necessitated formation of new municipalities in the new districts.

The municipal department officials were holding discussions with panchayat raj staff and making plans to change panchayats nearer to urbanization into municipalities, based on consensus.

The administrative councils of gram panchayats will continue till July 2018. Efforts are going on to constitute municipal councils by merging gram panchayats that were near by mandal headquarters, in the 438 mandals of the State.

There are 72 municipal corporations in the State including Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. The number may rise to 124 based on the need. Plans are afoot to set up at least four municipalities in each district and the officials are busy in collecting the income details of various gram panchayats.

They were also gathering the details of government lands near the villages.The then Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy held gram panchayat elections in July 2013 in united Andhra Pradesh, following court orders. ZPTC and MPTC elections were held in April 2014.

These elections were conducted after panchayat polls as cases against reservations were pending in the court.
At present, there are 8,610 sarpanches, 8,425 upa-sarpanches and 78,708 ward members in the State. The total population of gram panchayats is 2.26 crores.

As the government directed to provide basic facilities in village panchayats before making them municipalities the Mission Bhagiratha, being operated with World Bank funds, was linked with municipalities also.

Since the State needs additional income to pay back the World Bank funds, it is mulling either to wait till the tenure of administrative councils to conclude or to set up municipalities. It is also checking for the legal problems if any.