BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Friday directed the state government and the State Election Commission (SEC) to complete the process of elections to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) by December 31, 2022.
Justice Hemant Chandangoudar passed the order while quashing the reservation notification issued for 243 wards of BBMP by the Urban Development Department, after hearing a batch of petitions questioning the reservation. However, the court has not touched the ward-wise reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and said that reservation for women should be done in descending order.
The court also directed the state government to give statistics to the commission constituted to look into the reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) and reservation be announced by November 30. After this, the entire election process should be completed by December 31, 2022, the court said.
The state government has filed an affidavit before the court seeking 16 weeks time to announce a new reservation list with providing reservation to OBC. The court was unhappy with the stand of the government because already two years have lapsed without conducting elections to the BBMP.
Prior to this, the State Election Commission argued before the court that polls cannot be postponed indefinitely, and the government can be granted a week’s time to redo the reservation, in case there are any discrepancies in providing reservation for women. Any flaws in fixing reservations for any other categories cannot be considered for the present poll, said a senior counsel, citing an apex court verdict that mandates the commission to conduct elections on time.
The petitioners challenged the government notification over reservation for 243 wards. Government contended that reservation of wards for Backward Classes-A and B, and women have been done through randomization method, and reservations for SCs and STs in descending order of their population based on 2011 census.
It may be recollected that the court had dismissed a batch of petitions challenging the delimitation of wards a few days back.
BBMP had recently announced the final list of voters in Bengaluru. As per the list there are 71,19,563 voters in 243 wards of the city.