The Calcutta High Court has restricted the West Bengal Election Commission (WBSEC) from announcing the dates for Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections.
A Division Bench of Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Arjun Roy on Friday directed the SEC not to announce the date of the elections until a petition lying with a Single Bench challenging the delimitation of the wards in KMC. The delimitation was conducted by the new BJP Government after it came to power in May this year, increasing the number of wards from present 144 to 209.
The main petition challenging the delimitation is pending at the Single Bench of Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya.
Petitioner Dipu Das, a former CPI(M) councilor, submitted before the Court that if the SEC were to announce the schedule of the KMC before a clear judgment in the matter, her petition would not have any relevance. The Friday’s order incidentally comes within hours of Mamata Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee criticizing a section of the top judiciary for taking sides of the BJP.
Taking a jibe at the country’s top most judiciary, Banerjee earlier said that the Trinamool Congress government in Bengal lost power on account of injudicious decisions of the Apex Court. He remarked “I have no qualms in saying this that we lost the Bengal elections not to the BJP” but to the judiciary “because we took a leap of faith on the highest court of the country.”
Banerjee was talking about alleged “arbitrary” deletion of names from the electoral rolls and the judiciary failing to take adequate action on that.
The Division Bench held that it would not deliberate on propriety of the delimitation and said any notification announcing elections had to be issued only after primary suit had been decided in the Single Bench.
The Government had earlier decided to hold elections to seven municipal boards including Kolkata, Howrah, Bally etc. The polling was to take place sometime in the last week of December. The civic boards were presently being run by administrators as elections had fallen due since mid 2025. The Opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress and CPI(M) had strongly objected to the way the delimitation had been conducted “so as to favour the BJP.”
Dipu Das said that the ward lines were “arbitrarily demarcated with a clear intention of putting areas that generally do not vote for the BJP with the areas that vote for them, thus affecting the voting pattern of several areas.”
The CPI(M) leader also said that the “present demarcation pattern will make it a big problem for a vast majority of population to get civic services… which is already proven from a sample case — soon after the change of power in one of the wards in North Kolkata water and power lines of some 600 people have been cut... though power was subsequently restored they still have to bring water from Ganges… all because they belong to a different community and generally do not vote for the BJP.”
The BJP leaders refused to comment on the judicial order but said that the delay in elections could impact service to the people.