Calcutta High Court refuses to stay delimitation of Kolkata Municipal Wards

The Calcutta High Court today refused to stay the West Bengal government's September delimitation notification on redrawing the boundaries of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) wards to increase their number from 144 to 209 [Dipu Das v. State of West Bengal and Ors].

Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya was dealing with a plea challenging the delimitation exercise as arbitrary, procedurally defective and potentially designed to confer an electoral advantage on the ruling party (BJP).

As interim relief, the petitioner had urged the Court to stay the operation of a notification issued in September, and to restrain the West Bengal State Election Commission from calling an election to the KMC on the basis of the redrawn wards until the writ petition challenging the delimitation exercise is finally decided.

The Court today refused to grant the petitioner any such interim relief. It has directed the State government to file a reply to the allegations presented by the petitioner within three weeks.

The petition was filed by one Dipu Das, a former councillor who served in the post when the State was led by a Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] regime.

The plea prays for a direction to the State to rescind a notification dated September 11, 2026, delimiting the boundaries of the original 144 wards in Kolkata, thus increasing it to 209 wards, allegedly, without following appropriate protocols.

According to the petition, when it came to to raising objections to the proposed boundaries of the 209 wards, the window for submitting alternate proposals or objections by other parties was either too short or the objections were not considered at all.

"Despite specific objections of different political parties which participate in the elections of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the authorities have failed to consider the objections or disclose any rational basis for the delimitation. The impugned notification is therefore arbitrary, discriminatory, violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India and vitiated by non-application of mind and colourable exercise of statutory power," the plea says.

The plea has also alleged that the boundaries of several pre-existing wards were proposed to be modified to the extent that it completely reshuffled the number of electors and sizes of the wards.

The plea also alleges disparities in the size of the redrawn wards. The petition refers to a ward-wise statement that assigns an average of 15,149 voters per wards. However, in reality, the numbers are entirely disproportionate. The smallest ward, Ward No. 57, showed only 5,655 voters, while the biggest segment, Ward No. 66, had over 28,000 voters. The latter ward became almost five times the size of the former one.

"Petitioner states that the disparity is not confined to the two extremes, inasmuch as about twenty-three wards have fewer than 12,000 electors each and seven wards, including Wards 45, 56, 66, 121, 128 and 175, have more than 20,000 electors each," the plea adds.

Among other contentions, the petitioner has also alleged that the exercise is marred by political motives. She has contended that wards in areas where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a higher vote share in the April 2026 Assembly election were made smaller, while areas of weaker BJP support were placed in larger wards.

"The exercise appears to have been influenced by previous electoral results with the mala fide intention of securing partisan advantage for the ruling political party. The statutory power under Section 601 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 has thus been exercised upon extraneous considerations and without proper consideration of relevant demographic and geographical materials," the plea states.

Senior Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, representing the petitioner, told the Court that the delimitation process took place in the absence of an elected KMC board, following a recommendation by the Municipal Commissioner, after the previous board had been dissolved owing to a change in regime.

He added that the Municipal Commissioner could not assume the role of the KMC, being a subordinate employee.

He further emphasised that no parity of voters could be established since the wards had been redrawn mechanically. He alleged that the entire process had been orchestrated by the present ruling dispensation to garner votes in the future.

The necessary amendment to Section 5(2) of the Kolkata Municipal Act had also not been made to include the new 209 ward councillors at the stage of issuing the notification proposing delimitation, the senior counsel said.

Rather, the Legislative Assembly had hastily passed an amendment bill later without any real deliberation, he added.

Advocate General Surojit Nath Mitra, appearing for the KMC, rebutted these arguments.

Challenging the maintainability of the petition, he said that none of the issues could be entertained since the petitioner's rights had not been violated.

He further submitted that all requisite protocols had been followed in the process of delimiting the wards.