Kolkata, November 6: The proposed elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) have been thrown into uncertainty after the Calcutta High Court restrained the West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) from issuing a notification announcing the polling schedule until a legal challenge to the corporation’s revised ward delimitation is resolved.
A Division Bench comprising Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Arjun Roy on Friday ordered an interim stay on the issuance of the election notification, making it clear that the poll schedule could be announced only after the single-judge Bench decides the validity of the delimitation exercise.
The principal petition, pending before Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, challenges the redrawing of KMC wards, which increased their number from 144 to 209. The Division Bench left the question of whether the delimitation process was legally proper to the single-judge Bench and directed that the election notification must await its decision.
The court’s intervention comes ahead of the proposed civic elections to seven urban local bodies in West Bengal, including the KMC and Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC). The elections were expected to take place in the last week of December, with counting results scheduled for the first week of January next year.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had moved the High Court against the revised ward boundaries, alleging procedural irregularities and inadequate consideration of objections raised during the delimitation exercise.
In her petition, CPI(M) leader and former councillor Dipu Das argued that authorities had disregarded serious objections to the proposed ward boundaries. She also said that suggestions for conducting spot inspections and public hearings to obtain residents’ views had not received due consideration.
The petitioner further questioned whether the delimitation exercise adequately accounted for population distribution and the geographical characteristics of individual wards. She alleged that the changes were intended to benefit a particular political party.
The matter initially came before Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, who directed the parties concerned to submit affidavits without passing a specific order on the delimitation challenge.
Das subsequently approached the Division Bench, contesting the single-judge Bench’s order. Her principal concern was that if the WBSEC announced the election schedule before the court delivered its decision on the revised boundaries, the pending petition could lose its practical relevance.
The Division Bench’s interim intervention has prevented the election notification from being issued while the underlying dispute remains pending. Consequently, the proposed timeline for the KMC elections remains uncertain.
Reacting to the development, BJP Lok Sabha member and Union Minister of State Sukanta Majumdar, who is overseeing his party’s preparations for the KMC elections, declined to comment on the judicial order. However, he said an indefinite delay would affect ordinary residents and called for an early resolution of the dispute in the public interest.
