 "POLLS")
The Constitution of India, through the 74th amendment, is unambiguous: Elections to urban local governments (ULGs) are to be held every five years, on a par with those to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies. In practice, however, municipal polls have become a casualty of inordinate delays.
The elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are scheduled for January 15, with counting on January 16. The ongoing exercise, mired in controversy and demands for cancellation in wards where candidates from the state’s ruling coalition have been elected unopposed, is taking place after a four-year delay.
Across Maharashtra, 15,931 candidates are contesting polls to 29 municipal corporations on January 15, for 2,869 seats spread over 893 wards. Mumbai alone has 227 seats; the remaining corporations operate through multi-member wards. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its Mahayuti allies have already won 68 seats unopposed in these polls.
In Karnataka, Deputy CM D K Shivakumar said recently that the state government was keen to conduct all local body elections this year, including those to the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). BBMP elections were last held in 2015 and have been postponed repeatedly since the council’s five-year term ended in September 2020. In September 2025, the government replaced it with the Greater Bengaluru Authority, comprising five corporations.
Delhi’s Municipal Corporation elections were held in December 2022 after a seven-month delay, instead of May that year. Uttarakhand concluded its civic and panchayat elections in January 2025, more than a year late.
These are not isolated aberrations. A study titled The Delays in Urban Local Government Elections in India: Analysis and Reform Pathways, released by the non-profit Janaagraha in August 2025, found that 61 per cent of ULGs across 17 states had experienced election delays. Earlier studies, including the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India’s Compendium of Performance Audits on the Implementation of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act published in 2024, flagged persistent delays in municipal elections that undermine local democracy and governance, while adversely affecting the ease of living and doing business in Indian cities. As of September 2020-21, the average delay in conducting municipal elections after the expiry of councils stood at 22 months.
More than three decades after the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments conferred constitutional status on local bodies, elections to these institutions — overseen by state election commissions (SECs) — still do not follow a predictable schedule. This is stark at a moment when a 39-member joint parliamentary committee is scrutinising the 129th constitutional amendment Bill on holding simultaneous elections, based on the report of a committee chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind. In its March 2024 report, the committee proposed a two-step approach: Simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies, followed by elections to rural bodies — 256,990 gram panchayats and more than two million rural wards — and urban bodies — 3,408 municipalities and 80,436 urban wards — within 100 days. The 129th constitutional amendment Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha during the winter session of 2024, however, limited the scope of simultaneity to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, excluding panchayat and municipal elections.
Even when elections are eventually held and results declared, Janaagraha found an average delay of 11 months before state governments operationalise elected councils. The CAG report attributed much of this to the weakened authority of SECs. Only four of the 15 states assessed had empowered their SECs to carry out ward delimitation. Overall, just 11 of 35 states and Union Territories have granted SECs this authority; in the remaining 24, it rests with state governments. “Weak SECs contribute to delays in council elections,” the report concluded.
The more recent Janaagraha study found that only eight of 34 SECs have powers over both ward delimitation and reservation, while two have powers over delimitation alone. Election delays linked to delimitation and reservation disputes have been recorded in Gujarat, Goa, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Karnataka and Uttarakhand. Some state governments, including Maharashtra and Karnataka, have even withdrawn delimitation and reservation powers from their SECs.
Delays in ward delimitation, the CAG noted, stem from both administrative inertia and litigation challenging reservation policies. In Nagaland, for instance, elections to three municipal councils and 36 town councils were conducted across 2024, two decades after the state’s first-ever civic elections in 2004, because of prolonged objections to the one-third reservation for women mandated by the 74th amendment. Article 243U of the Constitution, introduced by the 74th amendment, clearly requires elections to ULGs to be held before the expiry of their terms. The 73rd amendment lays down similar provisions for panchayats. Articles 243ZA and 243K vest the “superintendence, direction and control” of municipal elections squarely with the state election commissions.
Yet in several states there is no statutory deadline to convene the first council meeting after elections, effectively delaying the start of the municipality’s five-year constitutional term under Article 243U. This, Janaagraha observed, pushes back both council formation and mayoral elections. After consultations with a wide range of experts and stakeholders, the study concluded that delays in local government elections and council formation are “widely felt” to be driven by political considerations. Where ruling parties fear an unfavourable verdict, state governments have been seen to announce municipal reorganisations, initiate or stall delimitation exercises, withhold or revise reservation notifications, or delay the first council and standing committee meetings. Ward delimitation and reservation processes conducted by state governments are frequently viewed with suspicion by the opposition, often triggering litigation that further postpones polls.
