StatesWest Bengal
Calcutta High Court bars Kolkata civic poll notification until ward delimitation case is decided
A vacation bench on Friday stopped the State Election Commission from notifying Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, after a former CPI(M) councillor challenged the redrawing of wards from 144 to 209.
Key points
- A Calcutta High Court bench barred the State Election Commission from notifying Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections.
- The bar lasts until a single judge decides the challenge to ward delimitation.
- The State's September 11 notification would raise the number of wards from 144 to 209.
The Calcutta High Court has barred the West Bengal State Election Commission from notifying Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections until a pending challenge to the redrawing of the city’s wards is decided. A vacation bench of Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Arjun Ray Mukherjee passed the order on Friday, November 6.
The bench modified an order of a single judge, who had declined on October 29 to stay the election process and had asked the parties for affidavits. The petitioner, former CPI(M) councillor Dipu Das, appealed to the division bench, which held the elections back until the single judge finally disposes of his petition.
The ward dispute
The State issued a notification on September 11 that would raise the number of KMC wards from 144 to 209. Das asks the court to declare the exercise void and to quash the notification. He says the Corporation has had no elected council since the House was dissolved on June 8, and that Smita Pandey was appointed its administrator.
His case rests on three points. The notification, he says, was based on the administrator’s recommendation, but she was an employee of the Corporation and could not stand in for an elected body. He calls the exercise gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court has held impermissible. He also says the wards were drawn on electoral rolls rather than actual population, leaving many residents out.
The State argued that it could carry out delimitation even without a recommendation from the Corporation, that the administrator held the Corporation’s powers, and that the challenge came late, after the September notification. Advocate General Surajit Nath Mitra appeared for the State. Senior Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya argued for the petitioner.
What happens next
No election date has been announced, and the order sets no hearing date for the single judge. Until that judge decides the petition, the Election Commission cannot issue the notification that would start the Kolkata civic polls.