The Supreme Court on Thursday, February 17, agreed to examine a plea seeking urgent hearing of a matter connected with holding polls for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), whose term ended in September 2020. Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, representing some candidates for civic body polls, submitted before a bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana that tenure of the civic body ended in September 2020, and elections have not taken so far as the apex court had stayed the poll process.
At this, the bench, also comprising Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli, said, "You have mentioned. Leave it to us. We will see." Then Chief Justice SA Bobde (since retired) in December 2020, stayed the High Court verdict asking the State Election Commission (SEC) to hold the election within six weeks.
The state government appointed a senior IAS officer as administrator of the civic body, after the five-year tenure of the incumbent BBMP Council expired. The top court suspended the operation of the High Court order for conducting BBMP polls to 198 wards instead of 243 as mandated under a new law. The Karnataka Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2020, was passed by the state to govern Bengaluru.
Then, the apex court had issued to Karnataka's SEC on a petition filed by the BS Yediyurappa government challenging the High Court's order. The state government contended that the High Court handicapped its efforts to improve urban governance, as the new law was passed to increase the seats for councillors to give due representation to Scheduled Castes and other marginalised communities in the municipal council. On December 4 2020, the High Court had asked the SEC to hold the election within six weeks.