HYDERABAD: The Cantonment Board Hyderabad (CBH) has raised the number of wards to 10 from four ahead of local bodies election, with each ward having massively uneven number of voters — for instance, ward-10 has 11,028 registered voters while ward-6 has only 945.

According to sources in the CBH, the areas having the maximum number of taxpayers have been given more representation by creating smaller wards while those living in kutchi abadis will have less representation regardless of the size of population.

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Elections would be held on a non-party basis as had been done in 1998 when four councillors — Mohammad Shahid, Saleem Akbar Ali, Zahid Ali Bhurgri and Mohammad Farooq — were elected.

Besides the four elected and one reserved members, there were six nominated members in the CBH including the president, who is a station commander, in the old 11-member CBH.

Besides the station commander, an officer from the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), a lieutenant colonel from the station headquarters, an officer from the Sindh Regimental Centre, a colonel from the 18-div headquarters and a garrison engineer used to be nominated members.

Now, the new CBH will have 25 members, with 13 nominated members, according to a source in the board.

Until 2003, the CBH was a class-II board as its population was over 50,000. Now it is a class-I board with over 100,000 population that is why more wards have been created.

“I think elected members must have more authority in the CBH. In the present structure, civilians’ votes are fewer than those of nominated ones’, so obviously they suffer in terms of decision-making as the board’s president has two votes.

MNA Ameer Ali Shah Jamote will be filing a bill in the National Assembly to seek an amendment to the Cantonments Act, 1924,” said Zahid Bhurgri, president of PPP Hyderabad district, who has remained MPA from the Cantonment area and has also served as vice president of the CBH.

Besides 10 general councillors, one each will be elected on reserved seats for minorities and for women which will raise the number of elected ones to 12. Therefore, an equal number of nominated members will be part of the board in addition to the president of the CBH under the law.

Presently, 36 polling stations have been planned for 10 wards. Out of 40,245 voters, 11,025 are registered in ward-10 which represent mostly kutchi abadis. The ward-6 covering areas like Defence and Civil Lines where relatively affluent voters live has only 945 voters. The second biggest area is ward-9 with 6,422 voters followed by ward-I with 2,135 voters.

“Taxpayers are given more representation in the board because they have right to it. In kutchi abadis we don’t recover taxes, therefore, their size of constituency is considerably large,” argued the source while requesting anonymity.

He said these delimitations were challenged in the court of district and sessions judge where objections were heard and appeals were then disposed of.

Mohammad Farooq, who was a member of the outgoing board, said that his party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, had challenged the delimitation. “We had argued that constituencies should be created on the basis of size of population, but the CBH had a different viewpoint. Our appeals were dismissed by the court,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2015

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