Bengal opposition welcomes Calcutta HC stay on Kolkata civic polls pending ward delimitation plea

West Bengal's opposition parties on Friday welcomed a Calcutta high court vacation bench's interim stay on the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections, saying they would await a single bench ruling on petitions challenging the delimitation exercise that increased the number of municipal wards from 144 to 209.

The court's order restrains the state election commission from notifying the polls until the petition is decided.

Former Kolkata mayor and CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who represented the petitioners in the case, said the increase in the number of wards was unjustified as the city's geographical area had not expanded. "Old Calcutta (the original name until the renaming in 2001) had only seven or eight municipal wards. The number increased whenever new areas were added. The new state government increased the number from 144 to 209 in the name of delimitation while the city's size remains the same," he said.

"We will wait for the court's order on our petition," Bhattacharya added.

Opposition parties have challenged the state government's decision to increase the number of KMC wards, arguing that the delimitation exercise was carried out without adequate public consultation.

Former Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, "From our experience in the recent assembly polls we can assume that the civic polls won't be fair. Let the court review the entire scenario."

Mamata All India Trinamool Congress (MAITC) leader Baiswanor Chatterjee said, "How could a delimitation exercise be held without hearing out the people of the city?"

On Thursday, the Calcutta high court vacation bench of justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Arjun Roy Mukherjee restrained the West Bengal State Election Commission from notifying the KMC elections until a single bench ruled on the matter.

The vacation bench passed the stay order hours after the single bench hearing the original petition ordered all stakeholders to file affidavits in six weeks but declined to stay the KMC elections, which were otherwise scheduled to be held in late November.

The petition challenged the state's October order to increase the number of KMC wards, despite the fact that the civic body currently has no elected board and is being run by a state-appointed administrator.

The delimitation exercise, which took around a month, was notified on September 11.

Bhattacharya argued before the vacation bench on Thursday that the delimitation notification was issued on the recommendation of KMC commissioner Smita Pandey, who was appointed as the administrator after Trinamool Congress councillors, including mayor Firhad Hakim, resigned en masse following their party's defeat in the assembly polls in May. The councillors had controlled the civic body.

Bhattacharya argued in court that the administrator's recommendation to carry out the delimitation exercise could not be treated as the recommendation of the corporation, which is a body represented by elected representatives of Kolkata's citizens. He said Pandey, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, is a government employee.

Bhattacharya further argued that although the delimitation was carried out on the grounds that all wards would more or less have an equal number of citizens, the actual focus was on the distribution of voters to help a specific political party. He argued that such a delimitation amounted to gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court does not permit.

Representing the Bengal government, advocate general Surajit Nath Mitra opposed the petition, arguing that the state was empowered to undertake a delimitation exercise even without the KMC's recommendation. He argued that the KMC administrator was vested with the KMC's powers and that the delimitation could be carried out in the absence of an elected KMC board.

Municipal elections are also supposed to be held in Howrah, Siliguri and other towns. Delimitation has already taken place in Howrah, increasing the number of wards from 50 to 68.

In Siliguri, the number of wards will increase from 47 to 63, while in Durgapur, the number will increase from 43 to 53.

Almost all civic bodies in Bengal are currently being run by administrators.

With the KMC polls deferred, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has apparently decided to wait and watch, since the state election commission announced on Thursday that the new electoral roll would not be published on November 12.

Union minister of state and former state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar told the media that his party would follow whatever order the Calcutta high court passes. "We will follow the court's order. However, it must be borne in mind that civic administration will suffer in the long absence of elected representatives," Majumdar said.