Karnataka HC orders Bommai govt to hold BBMP polls on or before Dec 31

The Karnataka High Court on Friday directed the state government and the State Election Commission (SEC) to hold elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on or before December 31, 2022. The previous BBMP council’s term had ended in September 2020.

Justice Hemant Chandanagoudar passed this order on a batch of petitions challenging the reservation notification, while directing the state government to redo the exercise of providing reservation for women.

The court has directed the state government to collect empirical data on a war footing and furnish it to the dedicated commission. The state government has also been directed to publish a final notification, providing reservation as specified under Section 8 of the BBMP Act 2020 on or before November 30, after securing the report from the dedicated commission.

The SEC has to complete the election process within 30 days from the date of final notification, the court said. The court posted the matter to November 30 for reporting compliance.

With respect to petitions questioning a reservation notification, the court said the August 16 notification was in contravention of the triple test enumerated by the Supreme Court. The court further said that allocating seats to backward classes cannot be dispensed with as it is a statutory requirement.

“It is a settled law that a statute requires a thing to be done in a particular manner, the same shall be done in that particular manner and not otherwise,” the court said.

The court stated that the reservation of a majority of the wards for women in certain constituencies will deprive women of other constituencies from participating in the elections, and would be arbitrary and discriminatory to the women in all constituencies. The court pointed out that it would be appropriate that the reservation of wards for women was spread out proportionately.

The petitioners had contended that in the majority of the wards, coming under Assembly constituencies represented by opposition MLAs, reservation had been provided to women candidates and in those constituencies represented by ruling party MLAs, reservation had been made in favour of the general category.

Insofar as the OBC reservation, it was argued that the criteria for identifying political backwardness had been ignored and the dedicated commission had based all its findings on criteria adopted in providing reservation in education.