Kolkata, Oct 29 — The Calcutta High Court on Thursday refused to intervene in a case challenging the delimitation of wards under the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), which is scheduled to go for polls by the year-end.
As per the draft delimitation proposal, the number wards under the KMC are slated to be increased to 209 from the current figure of 144.
A petition was filed at the Calcutta High Court earlier this month challenging the basis of the delimitation proposals, where the petitioner claimed that the delimitation exercise was not conducted as per the prescribed rules.
The matter came up for hearing on Thursday at the bench of Justice Hiranmaya Bhattacharya and at the end of the hearing his bench refused to intervene in the matter for the time being.
However, Justice Bhattacharya did not reject the petition altogether and instead directed both the West Bengal government and petitioners to file their respective affidavits in the matter.
As per the court's order on Thursday, the state government should file its affidavit in the matter within the next four weeks, and the petitioner will file its counter affidavit in the matter within two weeks from the time the state government will file its affidavit.
The matter will come up for hearing again after six weeks following which the court will receive affidavits from both the parties.
The polling for seven urban civic bodies in West Bengal, including that of KMC is likely in December this year.
Before that, complications arose over the ward realignment.
Many thought that the impasse would be resolved after Thursday's hearing.
Now with the court refusing to intervene in the matter for now, the decision on ward realignment remains in place.
The petition challenging the delimitation had claimed that reasonable adjustments were not made in the redrawing of ward boundaries and factors like population, geographical location and administrative consistency of the wards were not properly considered in the delimitation process.
The petitioner also questioned the rationale behind the delimitation.