Civic Administration
The city is run by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation. The Municipality of Vijayawada was constituted on 1 April 1888 and was upgraded as a selection grade municipality in the year 1960. The municipality was upgraded to a corporation in 1981. With the merger of Gunadala, Patamata and Bhavanipuram village panchayats and two villages payakapuram and Kundavari kandrika in the corporation in 1985. More than 200,000 people reside outside corporation limits. Many areas on outskirts or yet to be merged into corporation limits. The total area of the corporation is 61.8 square kilometres (23.9 sq mi) and the population of the whole city (along with Vijayawada sub-urban and Vijayawada rural) is more than 2.5 million.
The city is divided into 59 political wards. Each ward of the Municipal Corporation is represented by an area corporator. An elected body headed by the mayor performs the administration of the corporation. The commissioner acts as the executive head and oversees the day-to-day functioning of the local body. The commissioner is an IAS officer of joint collector rank appointed by the state government. It has a dedicated sub-collector's office for administration of state and central government programmes. The staff strength of the corporation is just over 5,000. Vijayawada is one of the three cities in Andhra Pradesh to be provided with its own police commissionerate. The Vijayawada City Police is headed by a police commissioner, who is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of DIG rank.
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