Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Friday restrained the state election commission from announcing the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections till a single-judge bench disposes of a petition challenging the rise in the number of wards in the city from 144 to 209 following delimitation.
The five-year term of the now-defunct board of KMC, which is run by an administrator, would have ended on Dec 7. The bench of justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Arjun Ray Mukherjee said in its 21-page order, “In the present case, the manner in which the Corporation was dissolved mid-term and an Administrator appointed and the hasty chronology of events thereafter lends some substance to the appellant’s arguments that there might have been a method in the madness. He also announced that after Nov 30, the Bengal govt would appoint coordinators in all 209 wards to work with the KMC administration to ensure seamless service delivery. State advocate general Surajit Nath Mitra submitted that Article 243-ZG of the Constitution bars courts from interfering in electoral matters concerning municipalities. The AG also submitted that since the KMC (Amendment) Act, 2026, had incorporated 209 wards, any debate now on what the civic could or could not do was purely academic. “Article 243-ZA (of the Constitution) does not specifically cover delimitation prior to the electoral process, but relates to superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, elections and laws made in connection therewith.
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The bench also said the petition challenging the delimitation had “a sufficiently strong prima facie case” and agreed that if the KMC poll dates were announced now, based on the post-delimitation ward count, the plea would be “rendered infructuous”. This, he said, will be done as per the existing KMC legal provisions. Taking a dig at the opposition, Adhikari said, “You cannot find candidates, neither do you have voters. Citing SC orders, he argued that “it is for the govt to decide, not for the court to dictate, the manner in which panchayat areas and constituencies in each panchayat area will be delimited”. He said the points being raised before the HC were not flagged at public hearings related to the delimitation. The HC, however, said delimitation was a legislative act, not an executive one. The bench said the appointment of an administrator “is a stop-gap… arrangement to ensure continuity of… essential functions and duties of the Corporation functionaries till a new Corporation is elected within the mandatory period of six months from dissolution. It reasoned that an administrator could not “substitute” an elected corporation. “The very premise and genesis of the draft notification (on delimitation) was bad in law,” the bench said. The exercise excluded a large number of people since it was based on the electoral roll, instead of the population, Das said in his petition.
CM Suvendu Adhikari indicated the Bengal govt would challenge the order. So you want to stall the election. The administrator – a govt appointee – can only perform executive functions for six months, within which an elected civic board has to take charge. “In view of such genetic defect, the subsequent final publication and consequential alteration to Schedule II (adding new wards after delimitation) is vitiated by law. The bench did not agree with the advocate general’s submission on constitutional bar argument. Former Kolkata councillor Dipu Das had moved the HC arguing that “in the garb of delimitation, the KMC has resorted to gerrymandering in order to secure partisan advantage to a political party in office in Bengal on the premise of previous electoral results. He also argued that the delimitation was done “without considering relevant circumstances such as geographical contiguity, compactness and administrative convenience, involving huge expenses from the public exchequer. Download the TOI App.