After a gap of more than a year, the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government has revived its plan of delimitation of districts in the state, by doubling the the number of districts in the state.
Jagan told the party MPs at the YSR Congress parliamentary party meeting on Friday that he had instructed the authorities to begin the exercise to complete the delimitation of districts, to increase the number from 13 to 26.
Jagan told the officials that the preliminary exercise for delimitation of the districts be completed before the general census-2021 process begins and notification be issued.
The authorities told the chief minister that the delimitation could not be taken up when the census exercise is not completed.
However, Jagan told them that the ground work could be taken up and public hearing on delimitation be completed. The exercise was in fact taken up last year itself, but could not be done due to Coronavirus pandemic.
Initially, the Jagan government proposed to increase the number of districts from 13 to 25. However, in the cabinet meeting held in July 2020, the government changed its mind and proposed to increase the number of districts to 26.
A committee under the auspices of chief secretary would be appointed to study the nitty-gritties of the new districts and make a recommendation to that effect.
As was promised by Jagan during the padayatra, there would be one district for each parliamentary constituency and the geographical boundary of each district will be in accordance with the jurisdiction of the parliamentary constituency.
As such, there would be 25 districts in Andhra Pradesh, since there are 25 parliamentary constituencies in the state. However, deputy chief minister Pamula Pushpa Srivani suggested that Araku parliamentary constituency was very geographically very large, encompassing four districts.
As such, it would be better if Araku parliamentary constituency is split into two districts, she suggested. This has now been finalised and the number of districts will now go up to 26.
