The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday raised objections to a draft report by the Delhi delimitation commission to redraw municipal ward limits, and claimed that the exercise was politically motivated.

A delegation of the party comprising Durgesh Pathak, Saurabh Bharadwaj and Adil Khan submitted the party’s objections to the Delhi State Election Commission.

Pathak claimed that there were huge variations in the number of eligible voters in each ward.

“Some wards have over 90,000 voters, while some only have about 30,000 voters,” he told mediapersons. “Each ward gets a fixed amount of funds, and this will create problems in governance.”

Pathak also claimed that some localities have been made part of wards even as they are physically located far away from the area limits.

“At several places, islands have been made,” he said. “At such places, the location has no connection with the ward.”

The AAP MLA also demanded that municipal elections in Delhi be held as early as possible. “Citizens want freedom from the corrupt regime of the Bharatiya Janata Party,” he said.

On April 5, the Parliament had passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill to merge the three civic bodies in the city – the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, South Delhi Municipal Corporation and East Delhi Municipal Corporation. The AAP alleged that the BJP intentionally introduced the Bill in April to delay the civic polls.

The tenures of the councillors elected in the 2017 elections ended on May 8.

On Tuesday, Bharadwaj said that the delimitation exercise seemed politically motivated, and that the boundaries of wards had been changed in an illogical manner, PTI reported.

“We have said that when we have to bring down the total number of municipal wards to 250 from 272, why did you touch all the wards falling under 70 Assembly constituencies,” he asked.

Bharadwaj said that the delimitation commission should have identified 22 Assembly constituencies that had four to seven wards, and reduced one ward from each of them.

“If the committee has its way, it will put every single densely populated ward into huge disadvantage over the others with lower population as development funds will remain fixed for each of the wards,” he said.

The BJP, however, accused the AAP of politicising the delimitation exercise, the Hindustan Times reported.

“Every political party and all citizens have the right to file objections towards the delimitation draft for MCD wards as publicised by the SEC,” BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said. “It is sad that after filling their objections, the AAP leaders have issued a political statement casting aspersions on the intentions of the poll panel.”