Chennai: From the existing 15 zones the Greater Chennai Corporation, one of the oldest and largest civic bodies in the country, will soon have 22 zones sharing the boundaries of Assembly constituencies.
Officials with the Corporation indicated that work to raise the number of zones would start soon. Corporation had ten zones and 155 wards in 2011. The number of zones was expanded to 15 during the expansion of the Corporation, and the city was restructured into 200 wards.
However, there are 22 Assembly constituencies in the Corporation, but there are only 16 assembly constituencies in the Chennai district. The remaining six are located in the districts of Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram, and Tiruvallur. There were persistent calls for these six constituencies to be merged into the Chennai district.
Once the scheme is implemented, Tiruvottiyur constituency will become a separate zone.
In another example, the Egmore MLA has to interact with three zonal officers for his constituency work, but soon he will be able to intreact with a fully equipped local zonal office.