The redrawing of electoral ward or constituency boundaries is a required step whenever the number of wards or the land area of an LSGI changes, or when new bodies are formed or upgraded.
Published Nov 01, 2025 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Nov 01, 2025 | 7:00 AM
Digital maps of Cochin and Thiruvananthapuram Corporations.
Synopsis: Kerala has completed the delimitation of local body wards across all levels of its self-government institutions ahead of the upcoming local polls. Alongside this, the state has become the first in India to finish georeferenced digital mapping of every ward, creating a verified GIS database under the Information Kerala Mission’s KSMART initiative. Officials say the twin exercises ensure legally sound electoral boundaries while providing a long-term digital resource for planning, development and disaster management.
With the notification for local body elections expected in the first few weeks of November, Kerala has completed the delimitation of wards across all tiers of local self-government institutions (LSGIs) based on the 2011 Census.
Alongside this exercise, the State has also become the first in India to complete georeferenced mapping of every electoral ward across its local bodies.
The ambitious project, carried out under the Kerala Solution for Managing Administrative Reformation and Transformation (KSMART) initiative of the Information Kerala Mission (IKM), replaces traditional manual ward delineation with a secure, scalable and highly accurate GIS-based digital system.
Beyond its electoral use, the digital mapping database is expected to serve as a valuable resource for various government departments and agencies, supporting effective planning, implementation of development schemes and resource mapping.
The project, jointly led by the State Election Commission (SEC) and IKM, ensures full compliance with statutory requirements and sets a new benchmark for electoral operations, disaster management and administrative planning.
The initiative originated from discussions held in May between State Election Commissioner A Shajahan and Dr KP Noufal, Chief Architect of KSMART, Government of Kerala. Following the deliberations, the SEC proposed exploring a technology-driven solution for ward mapping.
Dr Noufal conceptualised and designed a GIS-based approach, which was piloted successfully in Aruvikkara Grama Panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram. The pilot project was observed by officials from the SEC, the State Delimitation Commission and the Principal Directorate, along with the IKM technical team.
After validation in additional locations, the methodology was formally approved for statewide implementation. Using the QField mobile application integrated with Amazon Location Service/PostGIS cloud infrastructure, ward boundaries were delineated, verified and finalised with unprecedented speed and precision.
The process incorporated multiple official georeferenced data sources, including corrected local body boundaries approved by the Kerala State Land Use Board, the original ward boundaries from the Department of Survey and Land Records (2010), and high-resolution satellite imagery cross-referenced with Google Maps for spatial verification.
The project has produced two major outputs: downloadable PDF maps distributed to local body secretaries for statutory submission, and a geospatial database containing clean shapefiles and GeoPackages stored in PostGIS for long-term use.
These deliverables ensure multi-tier consistency across grama, block and district levels, creating a seamless geospatial hierarchy for both electoral and administrative purposes.
Officials said stringent topology rules were enforced throughout the project to ensure there were no overlaps, gaps or unclosed polygons in the final maps. Attribute validation was also carried out to confirm the accuracy of ward names, numbers and demographic attributes.
The result is a topologically sound, verified geospatial database that resolves long-standing issues of spatial inaccuracies and administrative inconsistencies.
Officials from the State Election Commission said the final georeferenced database would serve as a reliable foundation not only for electoral management but also for disaster response, local development and urban and rural planning.
“A noteworthy achievement of this exercise has been the preparation of a digital map for every local body in the state,” said A Shajahan, Chairman of the Delimitation Commission and State Election Commissioner, Kerala.
“This marks the first instance in the country where digital mapping of ward boundaries has been comprehensively carried out for all local bodies within a state. The real-time mapping process was facilitated through the QField application developed by the Information Kerala Mission,” he added.
Kerala began the ward delimitation across all tiers of LSGIs in July, based on the re-fixed strength of members and councillors determined using population data from the 2011 Census.
The redrawing of electoral ward or constituency boundaries is a required step whenever the number of wards or the land area of an LSGI changes, or when new bodies are formed or upgraded.
In Kerala, the process is governed by Section 10 of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, and Section 69 of the Kerala Municipality Act, 1994, which empower the state government to constitute a Delimitation Commission through a notification in the Gazette.
The first delimitation in the state was held in 1995. The second exercise, conducted in 2000, was overseen by the State Election Commission after legislative amendments in 1999 transferred the responsibility from the government to the commission.
The establishment of the Kerala Local Self Government Institutions (Delimitation Commission) Rules in 2005 further institutionalised the process, entrusting it to an independent Delimitation Commission. Subsequent rounds of delimitation took place in 2005, 2010 and 2015.
Although a delimitation process was initiated in 2020 based on the 2011 Census, it was halted midway when the government quashed the refixation of ward strength due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Delimitation Commission formed at the time was also dissolved, leading to the continuation of existing ward boundaries for the 2020 local polls.
The delimitation exercise was conducted in three distinct phases. The first covered grama panchayats, municipalities and corporations; the second focused on block panchayats; and the third on district panchayats.
The state government formally constituted the Delimitation Commission on 14 June 2024, but the commission’s secretary was appointed only on 11 July 2025. The body held its first official meeting on the morning of Friday, 18 July 2025, marking the formal start of the process.
Kerala currently has 1,200 local bodies with a total of 23,612 wards, of which 12,035 are reserved for women. For the upcoming 2025 local body elections, polling will be held in 23,576 wards, excluding the 36 wards of Mattannur Municipality, whose council’s term will end on 10 September 2027.
According to the latest voters’ list, Kerala has 2,83,12,458 registered voters eligible to participate in the local polls. Voting will be conducted at 33,751 polling booths, with a voter limit fixed at 1,200 for each booth at the panchayat level and 1,500 at the municipality level.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
