Mumbai: Shiv Sena demands redrawing of reserved seats, delimitation

Yashwant Jadhav

With the Shiv Sena's Standing Committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav demanding that reservations for civic elections be drawn 10-yearly instead of the existing five-yearly, the Congress party's strategy committee after their meeting on Monday said the Reservations and the Delimitations should be drawn up again. Committee member and Congress party group leader in the BMC Ravi Raja has said it is because of the delimitation that the BJP got more corporators than in 2012.

On the day the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by BJP that was filed seeking the Leader of Opposition position in BMC and thus a Congress party's Leader of Opposition will continue, the Congress leader during a media briefing said this was BJP's big loss. He also said that as BJP was in power during the last civic elections when the boundaries were redrawn, they ensured that the lines are drawn in such a way that it would benefit their party.

Raja said, "The delimitation was not a transparent process as many areas that are not connected with each other were also put together and it is only owing to these boundaries that they won such high number of seats in comparison to their 2012 figures. That's why we have demanded that the delimitation should be changed again this time around."

However, BJP corporator and group leader Prabhakar Shinde said, "These are baseless claims by Congress. BJP is a party that focuses on development and our corporators have a good performance record so whether delimitation happens or reservations, BJP will contest the polls accordingly. Why should a performing party worry about such things, they should be focusing on doing work, which is what we are doing."