In an attempt to provide civic services in an orderly way and ensure efficiency at the micro-level, the state government today delinked the Bally Municipality from Howrah Municipal Corporation, thus moving a step further to make the polls, scheduled to be held to the Howrah civic body along with Kolkata Municipal Corporation on 19 December, a 50-Ward affair.

A resolution seeking to delink Bally municipality, which had 16 wards following the merger with the Howrah Corporation in 2015, was passed unanimously in the Assembly today, reinstalling the Bally Municipality as a separate entity like it was before 2015.

After the passage of the resolution, Chandrima Bhattacharya, minister of state for urban development and municipal affairs told newspersons that the move to delink the Bally Municipality from Howrah Corporation was aimed at catering civic services to the people in a more “organized and orderly” way, which was otherwise got “hampered” due to its geographical location and people would require to traverse an extra mile and felt cumbersome to reach the Howrah civic body to seek civic services.

“With an eye to ease pubic trouble, the state government today passed a resolution seeking redemption of the Bally municipality as a separate entity and got it delinked from the Howrah Corporation,” said Bhattacharya.

Bally municipality which had 35 wards before 2015, was reduced to 16 wards following delimitation and these 16 wards got merged with the Howrah civic body in 2015, which had 50 wards augmenting its wards to 66 by the ruling dispensation after it came to power in 2011.

It wrested the Howrah civic body from the CPI-M led Left Front in 2013. The term of the Trinamul Congress-led board in the Howrah Corporation came to an end in December 2018. Since then it was being run by a board of administrators.

With the state election commission deciding to hold Kolkata and Howrah municipal polls on 19 December in acquiescence with the state municipal affairs department, the new-look Howrah corporation would now slug it out for 50 wards sans 16 of the Bally municipality in the upcoming civic polls.