A seat will represent minimum 76,000 people within a ward.
Like political parties, the Surat Municipal Corporation is busy preparing for the civic body's elections to be held later this year. The corporation is carrying out the delimitation process in the city to re-adjust 38 wards.
Surat's population is 45 lakh. It is learnt that the number of seats in many wards may be reduced so as to provide uniform representation to people across the city.
The elected wing of the civic body consists of 114 councillors coming from 38 wards. With the merger of 27 gram panchayats and eight nagarpalikas with SMC, the civic body's limit has increased from 124 sq km to 331 sq km.
The elected wing was under the impression that the state government would increase the number of wards for the coming elections, but the government has asked the civic body to maintain the number of wards at 38, with each seat within a ward representing a population of 76,000.
Sources within SMC said that the number of seats in many wards, especially those in old city and Varachha, may be reduced so as to provide representation in other areas. The number of seats in newly merged areas like Udhna, Athwa and Rander could increase. New areas will be merged with existing wards to maintain the bottomline of 76,000.
"The population of the Udhna and Athwa has increased substantially as compared to the walled city. So we have to delimit the existing wards in order to provide representation to all citizens. The delimitation work will be done within a week," said CY Bhatt, deputy municipal commissioner.
The delimitation process seems to have woken up the political parties. "We have to study the seats post-delimitation. Our party has a stronghold in the walled city. If seats are reduced, it can probably affect our numbers," said Congress leader Babu Kapadia.
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