Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Oct 23: Election for the urban local body of Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) is scheduled to be held on November 12. But there is a big question mark on the election being held as scheduled, as an appeal questioning the reservation criterion in distributing wards in the city has been filed in the Supreme Court (SC).

A number of aggrieved petitioners had accused the state government of being unjust in distributing wards to different categories of candidates. The single judge bench of the high court, which had heard these petitions, had directed the state government to review the reservations list and revise it accordingly. But the government appealed against this order and got a favourable verdict from the division bench which upheld the reservation list announced by the state government.

Several petitioners have since gone on appeal to the SC, questioning the order of the division bench.

The government, when announcing the reservation list, had released a list exclusively for MCC on June 26, 2018. Before that, the delimitation process had been undertaken. The government had decided to change reservation category for as much as half of the wards in the corporation limits. If this list is followed, most of the current BJP corporators including veterans will lose their right to fight the election from their respective wards.

BJP leaders including former leader of the opposition in MCC Premanand Shetty, noted that the coalition government formed by the Congress and JD(S) had made sure that many of the BJP corporators were ineligible to fight the election. He said that SC has fixed October 25 as the date for hearing the appeal. He said that having been aggrieved at the reservation criteria notified by the state government, as the government's list of faulty, and robbed many of their right to contest, many appeals were filed seeking to cancel the existing ward reservation list and replace it with a balanced list.

At the same time, Shetty said that the party will field candidates from all the 60 wards of the city corporation. On the other hand, former mayor and former chief whip in the council and Congress leader Shshidhar Hegde expressed readiness to face the election. He said that once the SC announces its order, his party will release the list of its candidates.