Tiruchi city seeks to expand

The Tiruchi City Corporation (TCC) has submitted a proposal on delimitation to the State government for extending the city by merging a few areas situated around it.

The proposal, drafted based on a survey on identifying urbanised suburbs belonging to the neighbouring municipal, town panchayats and village panchayats, was submitted to the Commissionerate of Municipal Administration a few days ago, sources said.

The proposal has detailed information on the municipality, town panchayats and village panchayats, which are likely to be merged with the Tiruchi Corporation.

Besides the profile of these areas, the proposal had data on households, distance from Tiruchi city, percentage of agricultural activities, industrial activities and existing basic amenities in the local bodies.

The data had been collected from various government sources and field visits.

According to sources, the villages and town panchayats located within a radius of 3 km from the Tiruchi Corporation limits have been included in the proposal so as to merge them with the Corporation.

Though the proposal is yet to be made public, it is said that several areas including Thuvakudi municipality, Koothaipar town panchayat, Somarasampettai, Malliampathu, Bikshandarkoil, Nachikurichi, Kambarasampettai, Mutharasanallur, Maruthandakurichi and Thalakudi village panchayats have been included in the delimitation plan.

Of them, Thuvakudi and Koothaipar were proposed to be brought under Tiruchi in the last delimitation proposal in 2011 also.

However, they were omitted due to protests from locals.

Stating that it was too early to spell out the areas to be merged with the Corporation, a senior official told The Hindu that the proposal had to pass many stages.

Various parameters fixed by the State government would be analysed in detail before finalising the areas to be added.

There were chances for deleting the predominately agricultural villages from the delimitation plan.

The areas, which were fast developing, would only be merged with the Corporation.

During the last delimitation process in 2011, Tiruchi Corporation was extended by merging areas such as Tiruverumbur town panchayat, Pappakurichi, Ellakudi, Keezha Kalkandarkottai and Alathur village panchayats.

With the delimitation, the total wards went up to 65 from 60.

Against merger

Meanwhile, about 150 residents belonging to Navalpattu thronged the Tiruchi Collectorate here on Monday, protesting against the move to merge their village with the Tiruchi Corporation.

They also presented a petition to Collector K. Rajamani.

Source:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/tiruchi-city-seeks-to-expand/article19668888.ece