Karnataka local polls in March, Assembly in May

Bangalore, Feb 14: After court and legislative battles, elections to seven city corporations and 201 City Municipals Councils, Town Municipal Councils and Town Panchayats in

will be held on March 7 based on 2007 reservation list. With this the state will witness two elections this year as assembly elections are slated for in May.

The State Election Commission (SEC) announcement on Thursday comes a day after the Supreme Court directed the state functionaries to cooperate with the SEC to conduct the elections, and also in the light of attempts by the State Government to curtail the powers of SEC to take independent decisions in fixing dates for elections to urban local bodies. The Government had tried to amend the Karnataka Municipalities and Certain Other Law (Amendment) Bill 2013 in this regard but the Governor had rejected the resolution in the Legislature.

Seven city corporations going to elections on March 7 are Davangere, Bellary, Gulbarga, Mysore, Mangalore, Belgaum and Hubli-Dharwad city corporations. Elections will also be held to 43 City Municipal Councils, 65 Town Municipal Council and 93 Town Panchayats, according to the note given by State Election Commission.

Announcing the calendar of events here, the State Election Commissioner C R Chikkamath said that the results would be announced on March 11. "The code of conduct for the elections will come into effect from Friday morning and the elections would be held based on the 2007 ward-wise reservation," he informed.

The SEC is holding elections under the 2007 ward wise reservations since the State Government had failed to provide reservation list to the commission before February 4 as per the Supreme Court order.

The elections have been scheduled to be held before the PUC examinations slated from March 13. On whether teachers would be drafted for election duty as it would be examination season, Chikkamath said that the decision had been left to the deputy commissioners. "The elections are being held only in urban areas and would be over on March 7, much before the PUC examinations that is scheduled to start from March 13," he said.

The logistics of the elections are: 85.32 lakh voters, 10,482 polling booths, 40,000 EVMs, 11,500 presiding officers, 4,976 wards and Rs 30 crore expenditure to the state exchequer.

OneIndia News