Congress may not hold Bengaluru civic polls before 2024 general election

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bengaluru may have to wait for an elected council until Lok Sabha polls are over since efforts are being made to somehow put off the elections, according to people aware of the thinking in the ruling Congress. Congress ministers have publicly said that the polls to the city's civic body, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), will be held by December, the latest being transport minister Ramalinga Reddy, who made a statement last Friday. However, after the delimitation, there will be an appeal period, when people who want to push the polls ahead will have an opportunity to do so.

The BBMP's elected council's term expired in September 2020. The local body earlier had 198 seats. In July last year, the BJP notified 243 wards, which the then opposition Congress had protested.

In June this year, the Karnataka High Court gave the Congress government a 12-week deadline to finish the delimitation process. The state government on Friday issued a revised ward delimitation for the BBMP, reducing the number of wards to 225 from 243 in the previous notice. The Congress has a fair shot, according to independent watchers, as the delimitation and assigning reserved seats may help it.

The party has already begun targeting defector MLAs who had joined the BJP back in 2018 to secure its chances of winning, said people aware of the matter. The BJP, however, has more MLAs in Bengaluru at present than the Congress. While the latter won the assembly polls by a landslide 135 seats, in the state's capital, it won only 12 seats, as opposed to the BJP's 16.