BENGALURU: Conducting civic body elections in Bengaluru continues to be a challenge for the State Election Commission of Karnataka (SEC-K), even though the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise has been completed.
A senior SEC official said, “The Election Commission of India (ECI) is yet to give us the data, which then needs to be bifurcated ward wise. The delay in procuring data will impact the lined-up events. The timely completion of the city corporation elections, as per Supreme Court orders, before December-end 2026 could then become difficult.”
Other officials said they are preparing a detailed chronology of events that have happened and events scheduled for the coming days that will be submitted before the high court and Supreme Court, hearing cases related to corporation elections.
“We will place these facts before the courts, seeking more time if we don’t get data from ECI within a couple of days. After that conducting corporation elections would be a challenge,” the official added.
In the final electoral roll, published on October 27 after the SIR exercise, names of 99,32,303 electors have been cleaned. Till June 16, the state had 5,54,32,314 electors, while the revised list now has 4,55,00,011 voters. In all, 44,80,212 names have been cleaned from the rolls. The data shows that Bengaluru has a population of 1,07,08,716, while 59,09,775 are voters. Bengaluru Urban district houses 24,01,939 electors, BBMP North -- 13,25,284, BBMP Central -- 10,67,374 and BBMP South -- 11,13,554.
The SEC official explained, “The final rolls were made public, but we are yet to get complete information. We have written to ECI seeking it. Once we get it, depending on the type of data disseminated -- whether raw or assembly constituency-wise -- it needs to be processed through our software for ward-wise division.
The existing Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) will be roped in for the exercise. This will take at least 30 days and then another additional five days is needed for verification.”
‘Once polls announced, govt functioning will be hit’
Unlike SIR, no draft and final electoral rolls will be published. Only one final electoral roll, comprising ward wise division, will be published because of paucity of time, the official said.
“But if ECI data is not obtained at the earliest, other concerns will arise. Once elections are announced for Bengaluru, the state government’s normal functioning will get paralysed.
Apart from the state government’s permission to announce the dates, the excise department approval is needed as December is the peak business season. Police permission will be required as there will be a year-end rush.
Conducting elections in January and February will be difficult as the all-India census is likely to be conducted. March is the exam season and teachers cannot be disturbed,” he said.