KARACHI: The provincial election commission on Thursday put on display the delimitation lists of 1,486 union councils and union committees of Sindh`s 29 districts.

The lists have been displayed at 231 designated centres and locations in the districts for public viewing for 10 days. The Election Commission of Pakistan has invited objections from the general public before finalising the new demarcations for the local bodies elections scheduled for September, according to officials.

The lists called preliminary list of constituencies contained a total of 355 union committees and 1,131 union councils in the province. Of them, 213 union committees and 22 union councils fall within Karachi`s six district municipal corporations (DMCs) and the Karachi District Council (KDC), respectively.

Three more municipal corporations of Hyderabad, Sukkur and Larkana have been notified with 96, 26 and 20 union committees, respectively, having been carved out.

The three districts, along with 19 other districts and Karachi division, will have district councils as well where 21, 44 and 37 union councils have been carved out.Of ficials in the provincial election commission said that the administrative boundaries within various districts including Karachi had continuously been changed over the years because of which they could not rule out more changes in the proposed delimitations in future. However, they hoped, no further changes would happen after Friday as this could cause a delay in the schedule of the local government elections in the province.

In Karachi, with the all changes so far made by the provincial revenue department, the election commission officials have increased the union committees in Karachi West from 40 to 43 after the Harbour and Mauripur subdivisions, earlier part of Karachi South, were included in this (West) district.

Thus five union councils have been carved out in Karachi West, which earlier was completely urban, together with 17 union councils in Malir district. This has increased the strength of the KDC from the previous 17 to 22 UCs.

The committees in Karachi South have decreased from 39 to 31 while their number in Korangi, East, Malir and Central DMCs has been put at 37, 31, 20 and 51, respectively.

Officials said the city would have 213 union committees unless the provincial government notified any further changes, which, as the provincial election commissionexplained, it was constitutionally empowered to do so.

Objections and appeals The lists will remain on display until June 20 after which the election commission will hear objections and appeals against the delimitation between June 11 and 30. The process to dispose of the objections and appeals will continue till July 16.

According to the schedule, the last date for the communication of decisions by delimitation authorities to delimitation officers is July 23 and the final notification will be issued on July 28.

EC officials said each union committee would comprise four wards where candidates would contest for four `general councillor` seats. Out of the 1,730 wards in Sindh, 872 wards are in Karachi. With the 1998 census being the benchmark, the population of a union committee in the urban areas ranged from 40,000 to 50,000 while it was from 10,000 to 15,000 in the rural areas.

Karachi is the only city with a metropolitan corporation apart from six DMCs. With three municipal corporations elsewhere, there would be 37 municipal committees and 144 town committees functioning in many districts designated as `urban neighbourhoods`.Each union council and committee will have nine seats with the chairperson and vice-chairperson are required to be joint candidates from a party or a group.

Candidates would be contesting on four general councillor seats while one each would be allocated for women, minorities and peasants/labourers.

Subdivisions The subdivisions of Karachi South, after modification, are Saddar, Arambagh, Civil Lines, Garden and Lyari. Karachi East comprises Ferozabad, Jamshed Quarters, Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Gulzar-i-Hijri (Scheme-33) subdivisions. Bin Qasim, Ibrahim Hyderi, Shah Mureed, Gadap, Airport and Murad Memon subdivisions form the Malir district. Karachi West encompasses Orangi, Mominabad, SITE, Baldia, Manghopir, Mauripur and Harbour subdivisions while Karachi Central remains unchanged with Liaquatabad, Gulberg, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad and New Karachi subdivisions, and is the largest district. Its DMC will consist of 51 UCs.

Karachi East lost half of its strength.

Previously, it had 66 UCs before Model Colony, Shah Faisal, Korangi and Landhi sub-divisions were included in the Korangi DMC.