KMC Clears Eleven Projects as City Begins Ward Delimitation

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has completed structural audits of 160 buildings across the city as part of an ongoing construction compliance drive, and only 11 projects have received approval from the Technical Sub-Committee so far. The administrator said building permissions had been granted to 344 premises across the city's 144 wards over the past three years. The civic body asked developers to submit audit forms and received 200 applications, of which nearly 40 were found to be incomplete.

Audit teams have inspected 160 premises and referred 41 cases to the Technical Sub-Committee for detailed scrutiny, resulting in 11 clearances to date. Labour registration issues were identified as the primary reason for delays in obtaining approvals. The corporation plans to hold another meeting with developers and construction agencies to address the pending matters and streamline the approval process.

The corporation has also begun a ward delimitation exercise following directions from the state Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department and the chief minister's announcement on civic delimitation. Survey and legal departments are assessing the number of polling booths, geographical area, roads, houses, civic infrastructure and voter distribution in every ward. Officials have been asked to prepare plans assuming the number of wards could increase from 144 to around 200.

The state government is aiming to bring the number of voters in each ward to around 15,000–16,000 to reduce current disparities across the city. Kolkata has over 3.225 million voters, with Ward 66 having more than 85,000 voters while Ward 70 has only around 14,000. Ward 58 is the city's largest by area and Ward 22 is among the smallest in both area and electorate.

Officials said the delimitation will also take into account population density, civic infrastructure and service delivery to ensure municipal services are not affected while balancing voter distribution. If the number of wards increases to 200, the civic body will need to establish additional ward offices, urban health centres and borough offices and reorganise borough boundaries to ensure efficient governance.

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