RANCHI: The Jharkhand government on Wednesday directed the East Singhbhum district administration to initiate an exercise in Jamshedpur to revise the areas to be brought under the proposed industrial township and municipal bodies respectively.Chief minister Raghubar Das , who is also the MLA from Jamshedpur East assembly constituency, directed the state urban development and housing department and the local authorities to complete the exercise within a week and submit a report.Das held a meeting with chief secretary Sudhir Kumar Tripathi, land reforms, revenue and registration secretary KK Soan, urban development secretary Ajoy Kumar and other senior bureaucrats at Project Building on the agenda of developing an industrial township in Jamshedpur on Wednesday. A statement issued by his office in the evening quoted Das directing his officers at the meeting to demarcate the areas by speaking to people and their preferences. Speaking to TOI after the meeting, Kumar said "The department will publish a draft notification of the lists for deliberation as soon as the revised territories have been submitted to them by the district administration."The directive comes amid growing pressure on the government from different quarters to make Jamshedpur an autonomous municipal corporation so that its residents can exercise their third franchise. Earlier in October, Jamshedpur West MLA and state minister for food and civil supplies Saryu Rai wrote a letter to urban development minister C P Singh stating that he must be consulted for making Jamshedpur an industrial town or a municipal corporation. There are 34 urban local bodies in Jharkhand at present.At present, Jamshedpur has Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC) under the purview of Tata Steel, Mango Municipal Corporation and Jugsalai Nagar Parishad. The issue of whether Jamshedpur residents can exercise their third franchise has been a subject of legal tussle for three decades. A fresh writ petition filed in this regard by Jamshedpur based social activist Jawaharlal Sharma is being heard by a divisional bench of the Supreme Court.

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