The Uttarakhand Government’s decision to add new areas and initiate delimitation process of 41 Urban local Bodies (UlB) last year is one of the reasons behind the whole fiasco which resulted in an unprecedented showdown between the State Election Commission and State Government on elections of urban local bodies.
The State Government released the notification for delimitation for 41 urban local bodies in November last year. This decision was challenged in the High Court (HC) which cancelled the delimitation notification of 24 bodies and directed the Government to reissue the notices of objections and suggestions from the local people. In his press conference on Wednesday, the State Election Commissioner Subardhan clearly said that the government started the process of delimitation of 41 UlBs after the commission started work on electoral rolls for the elections.
When the matter of delimitation went to the court and after which it cancelled notification for 24 bodies it had become quite evident that the process of election of UlBs would be delayed. The reason for this delay is that the state government would have to issue interim and final notifications for extension of urban limit of these 24 UlBs. After that it has to undertake the process of delimitation which requires a time of 7 days in corporations and 15 days in councils. As per the law, a time of three days is needed to be given between interim and final notifications for disposal of the objections. After delimitation, the government would issue notification for the reservations of the UlBs which also requires a time of at least seven days. After this whole exercise, the Government would submit a detailed plan for the elections in UlBs based on which the election commission would release dates for the elections. The term of all UlBs in the State is ending on May 4 which means that the state government would appoint administrators in these bodies as new boards would not get elected by then.
In Uttarakhand there 92 UlBs out of them eight are municipal corporations, 41 municipal councils and 43 Nagar Panchayats. It is worth mentioning here that in three UlBs of Kedarnath, Gangotri and Badrinath the elections are not held. The HC has stayed the elections in Bhantrojkhan while in Roorkee and Bajpur the elections would not be held as the issue is in the court which means that the elections would be held in 86 UlBs in the State.