Poll panel moves High Court against Karnataka government

BENGALURU: The state election commission has approached the High Court over state government delaying in providing reservation and delimitation lists to it for conducting urban local body elections.

The commission has moved the court seeking directions to the state government to issue final notification of delimitation of wards to 18 urban local bodies and notification of reservation of seats of all wards of 215 urban local bodies.

While stating that it is duty of the state government to issue notifications of delimitations of wards and reservation of seats in the wards of the urban local bodies, the commission submitted in its petition that the state government is also bound to extend its full cooperation to it in matters relating to timely and smooth conduct of elections to various municipalities.

The petitioner states that despite several proceedings conducted by the petitioner with the officials of the state government, the government has not taken any action with regard to completing the exercise of fixing the reservation of all seats of the 215 urban local bodies.

Illegal hoardings
The High Court on Wednesday directed state government and the BBMP to file objections to the plea over illegal hoardings, flexes and banners, within one week. It observed that even though the enactment of Karnataka Open Place (Prevention of Disfigurement) Act 1982 received the assent of the President on August 23, 1982, the same is not implemented by the authorities.