Mae Sot city upgrade

The upgrade of Mae Sot from town to city municipality status has been officially announced in the Royal Gazette yesterday, after it was approved in the board meeting on January 11th. In fact, there were two announcements:

• ประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย เรื่อง เปลี่ยนแปลงเขตเทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด อำเภอแม่สอด จังหวัดตาก - Announcement by the Ministry of Interior to change area of town municipality Mae Sot
• ประกาศกระทรวงมหาดไทย เรื่อง เปลี่ยนแปลงฐานะเทศบาลเมืองแม่สอด อำเภอแม่สอด จังหวัดตาก เป็นเทศบาลนครแม่สอด - Announcement by the Ministry of Interior to change status of town municipality Mae Sot to city municipality

The change of area was necessary because there were contradictory boundary definitions which place some area to belong to both Mae Sot town and TAO Mae Pa, see the board meeting of May 21 2009.

What is still missing is the announcement of the new constituencies, which have to be defined before the new municipal board can be elected. However these usually show up in the Royal Gazette well after the election date. I still don't know what date the municipal elections will take place, neither has the Election Commission of Tak province any current news on their website, nor has the website of municipality been reactivated yet. I only know that it was originally planned for March 14, but due to the necessary constituency redefinition a date in end of April was targeted instead, so the date must have been set by now.

Since I think I may need it again once the special administrative area of Mae Sot becomes reality, I have drawn a map out of the coordinates in the two announcements showing the outline of the city.

View Mae Sot in a larger map
If one checks the map and boundary definition in the announcements in detail, one will notice that the MGRS coordinates in the map are bogus - easting and northing exchanged, whereas in the text they are correct. Took me quite some minutes until I realized that my coordinate conversion algorithm isn't the one to blame.