BBMP polls hang in limbo as judge's order gets stayed

BENGALURU: The Siddaramaiah government could not succeed in its efforts to get an amendment to the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, passed in the Legislature on Monday . The amendment is necessary for the government to ward off municipal polls, and push through its agenda of trifurcating the BBMP.
While the Assembly passed the Bill in the evening, it got stuck in the Legislative Council where the BJP and JD(S) are in the majority . The Council will take up the Bill for discussion and voting on Thursday . If the Bill is defeated in the Council -as expected -then it will come back to the Assembly for a passage the second time. After that it will go to Governor VR Vala for assent.

The Bill, upon introduction in the Assembly on Monday , was met with resistance from the Opposition BJP and JD(S) who described the government's move as a brazen tactic to postpone elections to the civic body .

In another development, the High Court division bench comprising Justice DHWagela and Justice Rammohan Reddy stayed operation of Justice BV Nagarathna's order who had, on March 30, directed the State Election Commission (SEC) to complete the poll process by May 31. The stay will be in force till April 22, when the case is being taken up for further hearing and orders. As a result, the Election Commission dropped its decision to announce the electoral calendar of events on Monday .

Realising that the government will have a great deal of discomfort before the courts as long as the words “BBMP“ remained in the statue books, the government has sought to delete it from the law by seeking to amend the KMC Act. It is to be seen if this “name change“ will have any material impact on the court case because the city's municipal structure has not changed yet, and it might be referred to as Bengaluru urban local body . The Chief Minister, while moving the Bill, said he was only trying to meet the aspirations of the people, and the need to restructure Bengaluru's city corporation has been spoken in recent years, not just by the Congress, but also by JD(S) leader H.D.Kumaraswmay, former BJP Law Minister S.Suresh Kumar, and the BJP election manifesto.

He maintained that the government was trying to trifurcate BBMP, not out of fear of facing the elections, but to improve the standards of life for citizens.

Law Minister TB Jayachandra said the city population has crossed eight million, and it is difficult to supervise implementation of the state and central schemes. The expert committee (B.S.Patil) too has recommended trifurcation of the city corporation, and the gov ernment had brought the Bill to replace BBMP with two or more corporations.