The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) released its final list of voters for the impending elections to the civic body on Wednesday, September 28. The list includes 79,19,563 voters — 41,14,383 men, 38,03,747 women and 1,433 others. There are a total of 243 wards in the urban body. The previous council’s term ended on September 10, 2020 and there is no elected council at present. IAS officer Rakesh Singh from the Urban Development Department is currently serving as the Administrator of BBMP.
The final voters’ list was initially expected to be released on September 22. The BBMP notified the final list after giving time for voters to file objections or make corrections. The civic body had earlier asked the voters to go to its website www.bbmp.com to check if their details and the details of their family members were accurate.
On August 26, the 243 BBMP wards' draft voters list was published on the BBMP website. The draft list, which was created when the BBMP wards were expanded from 198 to 243, contained 79,08,394 people. Based on the population and demographics of Bengaluru city, the state government had carried out a ward delimitation operation that increased the number of the BBMP council members from 198 to 243. The Karnataka High Court is hearing a number of petitions contesting the BBMP ward delimitation, and the next hearing will be on September 30.
Compared to the 2015 BBMP elections, there have been more than 5.70 lakh additional voters registered. On August 3, the BBMP had released the reservation list for the 243 wards, following a direction from the Supreme Court. Out of the 243 seats, 81 have been reserved for OBC candidates and 28 have been reserved for SC candidates. Four seats have been set aside for ST candidates and a total of 130 seats have been reserved for general category candidates. Of the total 243 seats, half have been reserved for women candidates.