It is almost certain that civic polls in Bengaluru to be held only after Assembly polls

The two recent orders by Karnataka HC indicate that elections to local bodies in State will likely be held only after the Assembly polls, sources said.
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It is now almost certain that civic polls in Bengaluru will only be held after the Assembly polls scheduled to be held in May 2023. The previous Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) council’s term (2015-2020) ended in September 2020 and it will almost be three years before the next council will be elected, multiple sources in the government said. 

Two orders

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave Karnataka government time till March 31 to finalise and notify the reservation roster for the newly delimited 243 wards in BBMP. Earlier, Karnataka High Court had set a December 31 deadline for the elections to be held. The State government had sought more time as work of the Justice Bhaktavatsala Committee formed to study and recommend OBC reservation in local bodies in lieu with the Supreme Court order was still underway. Recently, Karnataka High Court has also extended the deadline for delimitation of wards in taluk and zilla panchayats till January 31, 2023, putting a question mark over those polls as well being held before the Assembly polls. 

With these two orders, elections to local bodies in the State will likely be held only after the Assembly polls, sources said.

Dr. B. Basavaraju, State Election Commissioner, Karnataka, who had approached the Supreme Court seeking directions to the State government to hold civic polls immediately, said Thursday’s apex court order meant civic polls in the city can be held only after March 31. “By then we expect the processes for the Assembly elections to have begun. Elections to local bodies are usually not held during Assembly polls. We will have to see how the time table of the Assembly elections pan out and decide when to hold the civic polls,” he told The Hindu. 

All MLAs were opposed

MLAs’ cutting across party lines have been using every trick in the book to push elections to local bodies both in Bengaluru and elsewhere, to after Assembly polls to be held in May 2023. “Holding civic polls now will mean diversion of energy, funds and will only create dissidence with a large pool of ticket aspirants in all parties. The polls should have been held on time in 2020, but now that it has been pushed indiscriminately for various reasons, holding it so close before assembly polls makes no sense,” said a city MLA from BJP.