Why are ruling parties in states wary of holding local body elections?

New Delhi: Elections to many important local bodies across the country have been delayed on one pretext or another.

One major reason for that appears to be the negative impact losing these polls would have on the ruling parties in those states.

Local body elections

Take for example the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that the Shiv Sena has been ruling for the past 25 consecutive years. It is one of the largest and richest civic bodies and the polls are said to have been delayed due to the critical issue of reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community.

The five-year term of the BMC ended on March 7, 2022. Following that date, a Municipal Commissioner was appointed as the administrator for the corporation, a first since 1984-85.

The polls will be one of the biggest indicators of the popularity of the ruling Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Maharashtra.

The Shiv Sena, led by former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, will contest the upcoming BMC polls on the plank of the great betrayal by rebels. Both Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aditya Thackeray consistently claim that the rebel Shiv Sainiks are traitors who have backstabbed Bal Thackeray and his family.

The polls will thus decide the real claimants of the Shiv Sena as well as the true heirs of Bal Thackeray's legacy.

Similarly, the BJP government in Karnataka has delayed the elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The last BBMP polls were held in November 2015 and the tenure of the civic body ended in November 2020.

Challenges to the OBC reservation list and delimitation of wards made by the state government have delayed the elections.

Karnataka goes to polls in March-April next year. If held before that, the BBMP elections would be the biggest litmus test of the BJP government and also indicate the level of anti-incumbency against it.

In fact, the BJP fears that the outcome of the municipal polls might influence the voters ahead of the assembly elections. Hence, the polls have been postponed and going by the present status, these are unlikely to be held before the assembly elections.

Also, the Shimla municipal elections were scheduled for mid-June this year, but the objections over delimitation in two wards – Nabha and Boileauganj – resulted in the polls getting caught in a legal tangle and hence delayed.

Political parties have been accusing each other of this stalemate. Perhaps the ruling BJP did not want to run the risk of losing the crucial local body polls ahead of the assembly elections, fearing an adverse impact.

The BJP feared a rerun of 2017 when Congress stalwart Virbhadra Singh was the chief minister and the party lost the Shimla municipal elections and went on to lose the subsequent assembly polls.

In 2017, the BJP registered its best-ever performance in 31 years of the civic body’s polls, winning 17 of 34 seats, while the Congress bagged 12. The saffron party followed it up with a convincing victory in the assembly elections.

Similarly, the municipal corporation elections in Delhi were scheduled to be held in April but were conducted only in December.

The polls were postponed after the central government expressed its intention to merge the three civic bodies in the city. Subsequently, Parliament passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022 on April 5.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had then alleged that the BJP, which controlled the MCD for 15 years, feared losing the polls and that is why delayed it.

The AAP eventually won the MCD elections. The results of these elections were announced on December 7. The AAP won 134 of the 250 seats, the BJP bagged 104 and the Congress secured only 9 seats. Three wards elected independent candidates.

The delay in the local bodies' elections prompted the Supreme Court to issue a direction earlier this year in May that all such pending polls in the country should be conducted without any delay.