HC to hear cancellation plea

The State government will decide on its next step on the BBMP polls based on the High Court verdict. During the hearing of a fresh petition by former Mayors P R Ramesh and Ramachandrappa, the division bench comprising Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice A S Bopanna told the petitioners’ counsel that the matter will be listed to Tuesday.

The petitioners’ counsel argued that the State Election Commission had cancelled the calendar of events on January 29 without obtaining the permission from the High Court.

In another development, the High Court on Monday issued notices to the State government and BBMP following a petition by H Manjunath seeking relief regarding new reservation list of BBMP wards. He submitted that the government should give the time to file an objections to the public before announcing the list, which had not been done earlier.

The petitioner submitted that even now, the government had decided to re-issue the reservation list and sought directions to call for  objections before doing so. Justice BS Patil, who heard the matter has ordered notice to the BBMP.

“TheHC will take up the hearing on the plea on Tuesday. The court order will be crucial. It will make clear the intentions of the court on the issue. Based on the order, the Government will decide on its next step,” official sources said.

The SC last week refused to vacant the high court divisional bench stay on the polls. The Apex court also asked the Government to approach the bench on redoing the reservation of wards.  Besides imposing the stay, the divisional bench had asked the Government to redo reservation of 23 wards of the BBMP citing anomalies in fixing it.