Following the Supreme Court order to hold BBMP polls in eight weeks after completing ward delimitation and OBC reservation, the state election commission has decided to publish electoral rolls.
With this, the poll panel has given an opportunity for voters to update their details.
“We will start updating the electoral rolls immediately,” State Election Commissioner B Basavaraju told DH. “The process will take around two months. Once the state government readies the ward delimitation and reservation list, we will be in a position to hold BBMP elections.”
“We had readied the electoral rolls for 198 wards. Since 243 wards are going for the polls, there is a need to update the voters' list,” he added.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, BBMP Chief Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath said the delimitation exercise is in the final stages and the report is almost ready.
“We will hold a meeting with the delimitation committee soon and finalize the report. A draft report will soon be submitted to the government. The wards have been drawn out according to a set of principles, the main one being an equal distribution of population across the wards,” he said.
S Raghu, who headed the committee that was responsible for preparing the BBMP Act, 2020, was happy with the Supreme Court’s order. “The High Court had directed us to hold elections for the 198 wards. All our efforts to increase the number of wards would have been a waste. We are happy with the SC’s order to hold polls for 243 wards,” he said.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had tasked a private firm to create 243 wards by carving new ones out of the existing 198. The number of voters in each of the 243 wards is expected to remain mostly the same.
Since the whole exercise is based on Census 2011 report, each assembly segment will have anywhere between five to 15 wards.
Srinivas Alavilli of Janagraha said installing local elected body is crucial. “A local representative voices the public opinions. The absence of an elected council had left the people with no other option but to reach the MLAs to air their grievances. We cannot have 28 MLAs addressing the problems of 1.2 crore people,” he said.