The inordinate delay in conduct of the urban local body polls is causing great agitation—both among the political parties and the people—in Odisha. Elections to the civic bodies in the state have been pending since 2018. While there is a growing buzz over conduct of panchayat polls due early next year, the silence over the fate of the urban local body polls is beginning to irritate the political parties. The main Opposition BJP has described it as a constitutional crisis and recently threatened to move an impeachment motion against the chief of the State Election Commission (SEC) for “his failure to meet the Constitutional obligations”. The ruling BJD retaliated saying that the BJP can take the matter to court. The war of words has only escalated as the polls could prove to be a mid-term examination for the political outfits ahead of 2024 general elections.
At the root of the problem is the fact that the state government has not completed the delimitation and reservation exercise, based on which the SEC has to prepare the electoral rolls and set the polls in process. The government has taken the alibi of the judicial writ on the reservation exercise. In 2018, the Orissa High Court had set aside the Odisha Municipal (Delimitation of Wards, Reservation of seats and Conduct of Elections) Amendment Rules, 2016, as reservation of seats had reached 66%, way past the 50% limit. The government moved the apex court but it upheld the HC order in 2019. In March, the government had hinted that it would set the process for polls in motion but the second wave of Covid struck.
Elections to civic bodies cannot be withheld indefinitely. The urban local bodies have been under bureaucratic administration since the last three years. The bureaucracy doesn’t have any accountability unlike elected representatives, which is showing in the vast deterioration of civic structures across cities and towns. The fact remains that the polls need to be conducted at the earliest so that the deadlock can be removed. The Odisha government must act swiftly to sort things out and there should be no further dilly-dallying on the issue.