Supreme Court agrees to urgently hear Greater Bengaluru Authority’s plea to postpone civic polls due to SIR

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (July 14, 2026) agreed to an oral plea by the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) to urgently list its application seeking an extension of the deadline for the conduct of elections to 369 wards across five city corporations in Bengaluru from August 31 to December 31, citing “severe logistical challenges” due to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Karnataka.

Appearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, in an oral mentioning, said the elections were due on August 31, and it would be “seemingly impossible” to prepare for the polls while the massive SIR exercise was on.

The case may be listed on July 17 for a detailed hearing and orders.

Application filed by the Chief Commissioner of the GBA follows stringent observations made by the court in a May 20 hearing, accusing the local body of even employing “delaying tactics” to postpone civic polls in Bengaluru. The time limit for the civic polls had earlier been June 30. The court, on May 20, had said this would be GBA’s “last chance”, and specifically barred further extensions of time for the conduct of the elections.

In its applications filed on July 9, the GBA said the whole administrative machinery and human resources of the five city corporations were fully engaged in the SIR exercise. The SIR has claimed the services of 8872 booth level officers, 938 booth level officers’ supervisors, 28 election registration officers, 75 assistant election registration officers, besides nodal officers, observers, trainers, resource persons, etc. Personnel had been drawn from municipal corporations, GBA and other bodies.

The Chief Commissioner, who is also the District Election Officer, said SIR entailed house-to-house enumeration by each booth level officer, followed by at least three visits for households which were vacant.

The application said Bengaluru alone accounted for over 1.03 crore voters, constituting approximately 1/6th of the 5.54 crore total voters in the State. The electorate was spread across approximately 40 lakh residences, requiring the absolute and undivided commitment of booth level officers, staff and officers of the GBA, the five city corporations and other departments. August 5 is the date of publication of the draft electoral roll.

Post the publication of the draft roll, each electoral registration officer in Bengaluru would be deciding close to one lakh claims of inclusion/exclusion in the electoral roll by September 25. The process was expected to prove to be a unique administrative challenge in Bengaluru due to the frequent intra-city migration and shifting of residences of voters. The final electoral roll is scheduled to come out on October 7.

“SIR is an extremely manpower intensive exercise... The GBA faces severe logistical challenges in executing a robust election by August 31 owing to the overlapping of SIR and the election to the five city corporations of Bengaluru,” the application said.