Bengaluru: The wait for Bengaluru’s long-pending civic body elections is set to get longer. Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) has moved the Supreme Court, seeking a four-month deferment of polls to the city’s five corporations covering 369 civic wards, citing the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across Karnataka.The application, filed by the GBA chief commissioner Thursday, comes despite the Supreme Court’s May 20 order extending the deadline for the elections from June 30 to Aug. 31. Terming it as GBA’s “last chance” to hold elections, the top court had cautioned the civic body against further delays and accused it of adopting delaying tactics to postpone the polls.The top court’s observations notwithstanding, the fresh plea effectively means the state govt led by chief minister D K Shivakumar is unlikely to conduct Bengaluru’s civic polls this year if the court grants the extension.The city has remained without an elected civic council since the term of the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) ended in Sept 2020. The last BBMP elections were held in Aug 2015, and the civic body has since functioned under an administrator, before being replaced by GBA and the five city corporations.In its plea, GBA claimed the entire administrative machinery of the five corporations had to be deployed for the SIR exercise, which aims to cover more than one crore voters spread across 40 lakh households.
