The High Court of Karnataka has declined to interfere with the delimitation of wards of some zilla and taluk panchayats carried out by the State Election Commission (SEC) for second time after the 2011 census while holding that revision of delimitation necessitated in view of the change in law on population range per member.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while upholding the legality of notification issued on delimitation of seats in Raichur zilla panchayat, Chikkanayakanalli, and Chickballapur taluk panchayats.
It was contended in the petitions filed by Lingappa Goudoru and others that the process of delimitation carried out sans any fresh census was illegal as the seats were already denotified based on 2011 census way back in 2015. The petitioners had claimed that number of wards/seats were changed in view of fresh delimitation carried out by the SEC in 2020-21 affecting the electoral process.
However, the SEC had pointed out that revision of boundaries of warranted in view of amendment made by the State Legislature in 2016 by amending the provisions of the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act, 1993 in revising the population range to determine the number of seats for zilla and taluk panchayats.
The court noted that the law was amended in 2016 making one member for every population between 35,000 and 45,000 for zilla panchayats as against 40,000 that was existing earlier; and one member for every population between 12,500 and 15,000 as against 10,000 that was existing earlier.
Besides, some of the areas, which earlier formed part of these panchayats had gone of the “rural area” definition in view of creation of town or city municipal councils resulting in change in number of population of the zilla and taluk panchayat areas, the Court noted while dismissing the petitions.
