[BBMP Polls] Supreme Court asks petitioners challenging delimitation to move Karnataka High Court

The Supreme Court on Friday said that those challenging the exercise of delimitation of wards under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) for upcoming polls should approach the Karnataka High Court first [State of Karnataka v. M Shivaraju and ors]..A Bench of Justices S Abdul Nazeer and JK Maheshwari said that the High Court can consider the challenges to the delimitation exercise."Having heard learned counsel, we are of the view that it would be appropriate for the High Court to consider the pleas on their merits in accordance with law." .After Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested that the High Court be given liberty to pass interim orders and directions, the Bench said it would re-draft the order accordingly..Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for one the petitioners before the High Court who moved the top court through an impleadment application for the limited purpose of clarifying that the High Court can take up the matter.Sibal indicated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would benefit from the present manner the delimitation of seats has been done.Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the one of the respondents, said that the State Election Commission should at least announce a schedule and not let the delimitation exercise keep stalling the pending polls..A single-judge of the Karnataka High Court had earlier this month asked petitioners challenging the notification calling for ward-wise delimitation lists to clarify the issue in the Supreme Court. This was given the fact that the top court had passed two orders, in which it had mandated that polls be conducted as per the pre-delimtiation scenario in one case, and called for data to be collected towards delimitation before notifying the polls in the other. A batch of petitioners before the High Court, including the Shanthinagar Block Congress Committee, had contended that the notification splits wards into multiple portions that fall within the physical boundaries of other constituencies, and is contrary to Section 7(1)(b) of the BBMP Act. This has meant an arbitrary and impractical division of wards, the pleas stated, as per a report in The New Indian Express. .The Supreme Court had last month asked the Karnataka government to notify within a week ward-wise reservation lists for the pending BBMP polls so that the State Election Commission can take steps to put in place newly-elected local bodies within a 'reasonable' time frame. A Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, AS Oka, and JB Pardiwala had given the respondents liberty to challenge the process of delimitation before the top court if there was any delay on the part of the State government to prepare the lists. In May this year, the top court had asked the State government to complete the process of delimitation and notification of the BBMP polls within two months.By that order, it had withdrawn the operation of its earlier stay order on the delimitation process for Bengaluru after noting that the State had passed the BBMP Act of 2020 towards conduct of the polls.The Court had in December 2020 stayed an order of the Karnataka High Court that had directed the BBMP elections in 198 wards to be announced within 6 weeks.A Bench headed by then Chief Justice of India SA Bobde had issued notice to the State Election Commission and the original petitioners before the High Court, M Shivaraju, Abdul Wajid and Ravi Jagan..The High Court had on December 4, 2020 upheld the validity of the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Third Amendment Act, 2020 (Amendment Act) which had raised the number of wards in Bengaluru city from 198 to 243. The High Court, had however, held that it will not apply to elections of those corporations where elections had become due prior to the coming into force of the amended provisions.In its appeal against the order, the Karnataka government said that the High Court has asked government to proceed with elections in 198 wards despite the fact that the Amendment Act increased the number of wards to 243."In other words, the High Court has directed the State to conduct elections in a manner which is contrary to a validly and unanimously enacted piece of legislation," the petition said..[Follow our coverage of today's hearing]