Ramgarh: The delay in merger of the Cantonment Board of Ramgarh (CBR) with the Ramgarh Nagar Parishad has deprived over 65,000 electors of their voting rights in the Feb 23 urban local body polls.The merger proposal of the CBR, which is 85-year-old, with the municipal council was still under consideration by the state urban development department when the civic body elections were announced last month.
The CBR was managed and controlled by the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Estate, as Ramgarh is a garrison town. The Ramgarh Nagar Parishad was formed by the urban development department after Ramgarh became a separate district in September 2007. The CBR has eight wards in total and a 15-member board headed by the Station Commandant of Ramgarh Military Station, with two regiments, including the Punjab Regimental Centre (PRC) and the Sikh Regimental Centre. It has eight elected members.The defence ministry halted civic polls for CBR since 2015. The Defence Estate announced elections for CBR in 2024, but it was put on hold due to the merger proposal. There are 65,000 electors in eight wards of CBR. While Ramgarh Nagar Parishad and other urban areas in Jharkhand are buzzing with poll activities, there is no such activity in CBR limits.Ramgarh deputy commissioner cum district election officer Faiz Aq Ahmad Mumtaz, said, “The proposal for the merger of the two urban civic bodies in Ramgarh was already sent to the govt and was under consideration by the state govt.”Anmol Singh, former vice chairman of CBR, said the ministry of defence decided to merge 62 cantonment boards across the country, including Ramgarh, with local civic bodies of the respective state governments. “The Khas-Yol Cantonment Board in Himachal Pradesh was already merged with the state local civic body,” he said.Anand Agarwal, a senior advocate and resident of CBR limits, said that there are no elected members in CBR for the last 11 years while no citizen member was nominated for the last two years. “For this, the people of the garrison town are suffering,” he said.
