Creation of new districts in Meghalaya may have to be put on hold as the administrative boundaries of all districts, civil sub-divisions, blocks and villages will remain as they are till December 31 this year till the completion of Census 2021.
The State government has on July 19 notified that the date of freezing of administrative boundaries of districts, civil sub-divisions, blocks, municipalities, villages, police stations, etc has been extended till December 31.
The notification was issued following a letter dated July 5 received from the office of the Registrar General, Census.
Freezing of boundaries will be in force till the completion of Census 2021 and it will restrict creation of new districts, change in jurisdiction of already existing districts, de-notification of already existing districts, creation of new sub-districts etc.
With this development, no change can be made in the administrative boundaries of the existing districts, civil sub-divisions and blocks despite the recent announcement by Chief Minister Conrad Sangma to upgrade Mairang civil sub-division into a full-fledged district.
There are also demands for upgradation of Sohra and Dadenggre civil sub-divisions respectively into full-fledged districts. Besides, demands were made for creation of Mawsynram civil sub-division.
Under the Census Act, 1948, the states and union territories have to issue notification for freezing boundaries of administrative units.
“The state governments and union territory administrations shall freeze the administrative boundaries of districts, tehsils, towns etc. from the date to be intimated by the Census commissioner which shall not be earlier than one year from the census reference date till completion of the census,” reads section 8(V) of Census Act, 2018.
The first phase of the census work was supposed to be carried out from April 2020 to September 2020 but it could not be done due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As per the revised schedule, fieldwork for the population enumeration phase of the census will be carried out in 2022-23 even though no timeline has been fixed yet.
