No notification for Kolkata civic polls till disposal of ward delimitation plea says Calcutta HC

    Kolkata, Nov 6 (PTI) A division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday restrained the West Bengal State Election Commission from issuing a notification for the KMC election till a single bench disposes of a plea on ward delimitation.

    The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has undertaken a revision of municipal ward boundaries ahead of the next civic polls.

    As part of the plan, the number of wards in the civic body may rise to 209 from the current 144.

    A petitioner has challenged the delimitation exercise, seeking a declaration that the entire exercise of determination of the number of KMC wards is void and the quashing of the September 11gazette notification on expansion of wards, calling it bad in law.

    A vacation bench of the high court, comprising Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Arjun Ray Mukherjee, directed the State Election Commission (SEC) not to issue a notification to hold an election to the KMC till the disposal of a petition pending before a single bench.

    Petitioner Dipu Das, a former CPI(M) councillor of KMC, claimed that the civic body had no elected council, and the corporation's former chairperson Smita Pandey had been appointed its administrator after the House's dissolution on June 8.

    The petitioner also sought an interim order of stay of operation of the delimitation notification and to restrain the SEC from issuing any notification calling an election to the KMC.

    The single bench had on October 29 refused an interim stay as prayed for by the petitioner, while calling for affidavits from the parties in the matter.

    Aggrieved by the refusal, Das moved the division bench.

    The petitioner alleged that the delimitation exercise has been undertaken based on electoral rolls instead of the actual population, thereby excluding a substantial number of residents from consideration.

    Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, appearing for the petitioner, had argued before the division bench on Wednesday that the delimitation notification was issued in September when there was no elected KMC council in existence, and the civic body's former chairperson, Smita Pandey, had been appointed as its administrator following the dissolution of the corporation on June 8.

    Bhattacharya had contended that the administrator had been entrusted only with administrative responsibilities and could not exercise the powers of an elected corporation, particularly those involving legislative or policy decisions.

    He submitted that, under the law, the delimitation exercise was required to be undertaken by the SEC and alleged that the entire decision-making process behind the notification was vitiated.

    Stating that "the writ petitioner/appellant has made out a sufficiently strong prima facie case", the court maintained that the state government had amended the KMC Act to carry out the delimitation process on the recommendation of the administrator, who doubled up her capacity as the 'Corporation' as a whole.

    "In the present case, in view of the Corporation having been dissolved and the Administrator appointed long back on June 8, 2026, there could not have been a valid recommendation from the 'Corporation' within the contemplation of Section 601 on August 5, 2026, when such recommendation was cited as the basis of the draft amendment to Schedule II of the KMC Act," the Friday order stated.

    "Rather, it was a recommendation by the Administrator appointed by the State itself, who did not have the authority in law to arrogate to herself the powers of the Corporation, acting as the 'Corporation'. Hence, the very premise and genesis of the draft notification was bad in law, being violative of Section 601 of the KMC Act. In view of such genetic defect, the subsequent final publication and consequential alteration to Schedule II is vitiated by law," it added.

    The court further observed that allowing the Administrator to recommend changes under Section 601 would create an absurd situation.

    The state government, the order said, could empower its chosen administrator to make a tailor-made recommendation and then be bound by it, effectively allowing the government to recommend amendments to itself and undermining the provision's independence.

    "Such puppetry cannot be compatible with the scheme of the KMC Act. The key feature of Section 601 of the KMC Act is the institutional autonomy vested in the Corporation in making a binding recommendation to the state government, which confers authority on the Corporation, an autonomous institution, to decide the delimitation of its own wards, in other words, its electoral constituencies," the order said.

    The order stated that the manner in which the corporation was dissolved mid-term, and an administrator was appointed, followed by "the hasty chronology of events thereafter" lent substance to the appellant's arguments "that there might have been a method in the madness".

    The division bench order acknowledged that the writ petition is still pending before the single bench and that it "is always open to the writ petitioner/appellant to challenge the Amending Act as well by amending the prayers and pleadings of the writ petition", which keeps open the possibility of the delimitation notification getting null and void.

    "Such statutory amendment, if construed to give effect to the delimitation process arising out of the alteration in Schedule II, would automatically also be vitiated if such alteration itself is set aside," the order said.

    The observations made in the division bench order, though, came with a rider that they were "tentative in nature insofar as the final disposal of the writ petition is concerned."

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)