Court restrains election panel on Bengaluru civic poll date

The Karnataka High Court on Monday restrained the state election commission (SEC) from announcing the date for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) poll till April 22.

A division bench, headed by Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice Ram Mohan Reddy, directed the poll panel through an interim order not to decide the election date till Wednesday when the case would come up for hearing again.

The order was issued on a review petition filed by the state government on April 7 against the March 30 directive of a single bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna to the SEC for holding the poll by May 30, as the five-year term of the civic body ends on April 22.

State poll panel commissioner P.N. Srinivasachari was scheduled to brief the media on Monday evening on the calendar of events to conduct the civic poll next month.

"We will wait for the high court's next order though we have drawn up the schedule, short-listed officials and selected observers for conducting the election in 198 civic wards across the city," Srinivasachari told reporters later.

The bench passed the order with the consent of counsels representing the state and the two BJP corporators (C.K. Ramamurthy and B. Somashekar), who filed the petition against the government's dilatory tactics on holding the civic poll in time.

Meanwhile, the state legislature began a special session in the Vidhana Soudha on an amendment bill to trifurcate the civic behemoth (BBMP) for administering the bustling city better in view of its nine-million population and crumbling infrastructure.

Soon after state law and parliamentary affairs minister T.B. Jayachandra moved the bill to amend the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act 1976 for splitting the civic body, lawmakers of the opposition BJP and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) raised slogans protesting against the state government for superseding the BBMP on Saturday.

The BBMP was expanded in 2007 by including seven city municipal councils and one town municipal council and 111 surrounding villages to increase civic wards to 198 from 100 earlier.