Notification for final wards reservation for Bengaluru local body polls by Nov 30, Supreme Court told

New Delhi: The Karnataka government has told the Supreme Court that it proposed to issue the final notification for reservation of wards on November 30, 2025, paving the way for new local bodies elections thereafter under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024.

The elections to the BBMP remained stalled for five years over issue reservations of wards, as its previous term expired on September 10, 2020.

In an affidavit, the state government, through its advocate D L Chidananda, informed the court that in order to reform the governance structure in the city of Bengaluru, the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 was promulgated, which sought to enlarge the municipal area and divide the city into more manageable corporations for better and more effective and efficient governance of the city.

It further said the new Act has been introduced keeping in mind the challenges and aspirations of the Bengaluru city.

"The city of Bengaluru has been seeing a large increase in its population, which was around 84 lakhs in the year 2011 and the projected population for the year 2025 is approximately 144 Lakhs. It is for this reason that the new Act was brought into force in order to manage the necessities for the people of the city and thereby enabling a better form of governance so that the needs of the population can be catered," it said.

The state government pointed out a final notification on delimitation of wards is proposed to be published on November 1, 2025 and a final notification on reservation of wards on November 30, 2025.

"In the event the State of Karnataka is able to complete the preparatory steps before the timeline, the State will take all necessary actions to ensure that the elections are conducted at the earliest possible date," the affidavit said.

The Supreme Court on July 28 told senior advocate A M Singhvi and Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty, appearing for the Karnataka government, to file an affidavit, explaining the steps regarding bifurcation, delimitation, revision, reservation and preparation of voters' list for the purpose.

On December 18, 2020, the top court had suspended the operation of the High Court order for conducting BBMP polls to 198 wards instead of 243 as mandated under the Karnataka Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2020, passed to govern Bengaluru.