The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is set to double its wards from 150 to 300. This comes after the merger of seven municipal corporations and 20 municipalities into GHMC. A ward delimitation exercise was done with the Centre for Good Governance. A draft notification for the new 300 wards has been published. Currently, GHMC has six zones and 30 circles. Each zone is led by a zonal commissioner, and each circle by a deputy municipal commissioner. After the increase, there will be 12 zones and 60 circles, with each zone containing five circles. A senior official, speaking anonymously, confirmed this change. The new ward divisions are based mainly on voter population. Each ward will hold about 40,000 voters, with a margin of error of 10,000. This means densely populated wards will be geographically smaller than those with fewer people. Highly populated wards have been split. Areas like Serilingampally and Kukatpally will get more wards due to their large populations in high-rise towers. Even in the core city, some wards have increased because of population growth. On the other hand, the newly merged outskirts have fewer wards because of sparser populations. This redrawing of wards is politically important, especially as wards in the old city nearly double. A special GHMC council meeting is set for December 16. Members will discuss, suggest, and object to the new ward boundaries. Already, protests are rising among residents and political groups. They have submitted petitions to GHMC Commissioner R.V. Karnan. Residents of former Badangpet and Jalpally local bodies oppose merging into Charminar Zone. R. Ramakrishna Reddy from Badangpet says, "Property tax collection from the existing Charminar Zone is way less, whereas our corporation had earlier topped the Ranga Reddy district in collection of property tax. If we are clubbed with Charminar, our funds will be used for the development of the areas from where collection is low, and the areas we reside in will stand to lose."