Supreme Court asks Karnataka govt to file an affidavit on conducting BBMP polls

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi told senior advocate A M Singhvi and Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty to file the written document by Monday detailing the steps.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Karnataka government to file an affidavit detailing the steps taken to hold the BBMP polls as per new law passed by the State legislature.

The BBMP's previous term expired on September 10, 2020.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi told senior advocate A M Singhvi and Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty to file the written document by Monday, next week, explaining the steps regarding bifurcation, delimitation, revision, reservation and preparation of voters' list for the purpose.

In his submission, Singhvi by November, the state government would hand over the process to the State Election Commission, 50 per cent steps have already been done.

He asked the court to dispose of the pending matter but the court left to it to the parties to decide if they wanted to let the matter continue or wrapped up to revive in future if the time schedule was not followed.

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.

In its affidavit filed on July 20, 2025, the Karnataka government said, it can be assumed that it can communicate delimitation notification along with reservation details to the State Election Commission earliest by November 30, 2025 after which the election to the newly constituted city corporations would be held by the State Election Commission by following due procedure.

The state government had earlier told the Supreme Court that the elections can take place only after August 15, 2025 upon the passage of the proposed Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024 and other formalities.