Karnataka High Court: BBMP elections to 198 wards should be announced within 6 weeks

Source:-https://www.theindianwire.com

On Thursday, the Karnataka High Court ordered that elections for 198 wards of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) should be held within 6 weeks.

The validity of the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Third Amendment Act, 2020 (Amendment Act) was also upheld by the Bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Vishwajith Shetty, but read it down to maintain that the Amendment Act did not extend to elections that should have been held before the amendment came into force.

The Bench had previously reserved the order in the case on 26th November.
The decision came in three petitions seeking orders for the State government to conduct on time elections for Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). M Shivaraju brought the first plea in this regard.

The recently enacted Karnataka Municipal Corporation Third Amendment Act, 2020, was supported by Advocate General Prabhuling Navadgi, appearing for the State.

The Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act was amended by the State Legislature to raise the number of wards from 198 to 225, pending the enactment of a separate law for the BBMP administration.

Navadgi argued that only on three restricted grounds, for lack of legislative competence, for violating fundamental rights, and if found to be ‘manifestly arbitrary,’ will a validly constituted legislation be struck down. The government cannot be guided to ignore a law validly passed by the State Legislature in the absence of such a finding on these restricted grounds, he added.

Navadgi explained that the State government had no objection to the same in the prayer raised by the petitioner seeking timely conduct of the BBMP elections. In fact, he stated that all the directions regarding the timelines under which the new delimitation process and subsequent elections are to be held would be welcomed wholeheartedly.

Appearing for one of the petitioners, Professor Ravivarma Kumar argued that nearly a dozen communications had been addressed by the State Election Commission (SEC) urging the government to refuse to fulfil the statutory duty of delimitation and reservation of wards as of July, 2018. The SEC was then forced to approach the High Court seeking directions from the State.

He argued that either the SEC or the petitioners had to approach the Court each time to compel the State to hold elections. There was a delay in holding the BBMP elections in 2015 and a delay in holding the Grama Panchayats elections in 2020.

Kumar also pointed out that on September 10 of this year the BBMP’s term ended. He also told the Court that no provision in law exists for the appointment of an administrator.

Senior Advocate KN Phanindra, representing the SEC, argued that it might not be possible to hold a one-year BBMP election, as it would take six months for 225 new wards to be delimited. It will then take another six months to fix the reservations and to prepare a new list of voters.

Shivaraju’s petition alleged that, pursuant to Article 243-U(3), there was a mandatory duty on the part of the State Government to ensure that the BBMP elections were held before the expiry of that era, i.e. before 10 September in the present case.

Ideally, the steps to hold elections should have been taken several months in advance in order to make it easier to conduct elections before that date, the plea states.

Till date, however, absolutely no steps have been taken by the State for the preparation of electoral rolls, the notification of reservations, etc., to Bengaluru’s 198 wards. The respondents wilfully disobeyed, the plea averred, to fulfil their constitutional obligation to hold timely elections.

On those grounds, in compliance with Article 243-U and Section 8 of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, the plea sought to order the State to hold elections for the BBMP.

The petition also questioned the Amendment Act, apart from this as it seeks to increase the number of wards to 225.