Bengaluru: Government racing against time to meet court deadlines on BBMP & ZP-TP elections

BENGALURU: The government is pulling out all the stops to complete the procedural steps required to conduct Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) polls before the July 22 deadline set by the Supreme Court.

The government is also scrambling to meet the 12-week deadline (from May 25) fixed by the high court to complete preparations for zilla panchayat and taluk panchayat (ZP-TP) polls as the court has posted the case for September 6. Senior officials, who are working on it, admit that it may not be possible to meet the apex court deadline, considering the ground reality.

Both BBMP and ZP-TP elections have been delayed for more than a year now. While BBMP polls were due in September 2020, the tenure of ZP-TPs ended in May 2021.

Elections could not be held as per schedule due to the pandemic and were further delayed because of procedural issues — the government enacted the new BBMP Act, 2020, according to which the number of wards went up from 198 to 243 and it set up a new delimitation body to redraw the boundaries of ZP-TP constituencies.

The Supreme Court on May 21 ordered that the necessary notifications regarding the delimitation of BBMP wards and their reservation patterns be issued within eight weeks and the government update the court about compliance on July 22.

“The Supreme Court’s actual deadline will end on July 15 but a lot of work is pending. There is no other option but to seek more time from the court,” said an official from the urban development department (UDD).

On its part, the UDD has completed the first step in the required procedure by inviting public objections after notifying the BBMP delimitation draft on June 24. The deadline for filing objections ends on Thursday (July 7).

The department on Wednesday notified rules for conducting BBMP polls, which is a procedural step required after the enactment of BBMP Act that replaced the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act, 1964.

However, the rest of the procedure will take time as the government has to address the objections to BBMP ward delimitation (there are about 250 objections) before issuing final notification.

Meanwhile, the Bhaktavatsala Commission, which was set up by the government to identify other backward classes (OBCs) eligible for reservation in local bodies, is still at work after receiving public appeals. This exercise, too, will take time since it calls for detailed enumeration to produce the required empirical data.

“I would not like to reveal anything about the work in progress at this stage. I can just say we are on the job,” said commission chairman justice K Bhaktavatsala.

As far as ZP-TP elections are concerned, the delimitation committee headed by retired IAS officer N Lakshminarayan is expediting the process after completing the consultation exercise.

“We will shortly submit the report. The procedures, including publication of the draft of delimitation of constituencies, calling for public objections and final notification, are expected to be completed by mid-August,” said Lakshminarayan.


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