Supreme Court gives Karnataka government 8 weeks to prepare for BBMP election

BENGALURU: The Karnataka government on Friday heaved a sigh of relief after the Supreme Court in its interim order said the state had eight weeks to prepare the list of Other Backward Classes eligible for reservation in local bodies. After that, the State Election Commission (SEC) must prepare for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections.
CM Basavaraj Bommai said the government had been worried about how to conduct BBMP elections immediately based on the SC's previous order and added the SEC has been asked to publish the calendar of events in the 9th week after the time given for delimitation and OBC reservation.

The SC bench passed this order, after hearing solicitor general Tushar Mehta who appeared for the state. The next hearing is on July 22.
During the hearing, Tushar Mehta informed the court that the BBMP Act has come into force effective from January 11, 2021 and the government has set up a commission for delimitation of 243 wards and a separate commission for determining reservation, including ratio to be provided for OBC category.
He submitted that work pertaining to delimitation of wards is in the final stage. He assured the court the commission appointed for determining reservation will complete its exercise within the allotted time.
The Justice (retired) K Bhaktavatsala committee has been set up to complete the OBC reservation exercise after collecting empirical data about eligible communities. It may be recalled that on December 18, 2020, the Supreme Court had stayed the December 4, 2020 order of the Karnataka high court in which the SEC was directed to conduct elections to 198 wards, instead of 243 as desired by the state government. The Karntaka government and several others had challenged the decision.
The high court in its order had directed SEC to declare the election schedule for 198 wards within six weeks from the date of issuance of wardwise reservation list and had pointed out that if the state government”s application for deferring the election to accommodate fresh delimitation exercise for redrawn 243 wards was accepted, it goes against the constitutional mandate of conducting timely elections.