KMC elections on hold: Calcutta HC bars poll notice on 209-ward map

Representative image. Paul Hamilton, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Why it matters

Kolkata has been without an elected corporation board, and this order pushes the election further away until the court rules on the ward map. It also means the 209-ward plan itself is not yet settled, so residents cannot be sure which ward they will vote in.

KMC elections cannot be called for now. The Calcutta High Court on Friday, 6 November 2026, barred the West Bengal State Election Commission from notifying polls to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on the basis of the state’s new ward map, which raises the number of wards from 144 to 209, until a challenge to that redrawing is decided, LiveLaw and Bar and Bench reported.

The order came from a Division Bench, a bench of two judges, of Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Justice Arjun Roy Mukherjee, sitting as the vacation bench. It changes part of an order of 29 October in which a single judge had refused to pause the process.

What the Calcutta High Court order says about KMC elections

Bar and Bench quoted the operative part of the order. The appeal was “allowed in part”, and the State Election Commission is restrained “from issuing a notification calling an election to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on the basis of the amended Schedule II of the KMC Act” until the main petition, numbered WPA 31433 of 2026, is disposed of. WPA stands for a writ petition, the main case before the single judge. Schedule II is the part of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980, that lists the city’s wards.

Read closely, the order is narrower than “elections cancelled”. By Bar and Bench’s account:

• It stops the poll notification based on the new 209-ward schedule. It does not strike down the delimitation.
• The rest of the single judge’s order of 29 October stays as it was.
• The bench said its observations are tentative and do not decide the final case.

In practice the Kolkata civic polls wait until a single judge hears and decides the challenge, LiveLaw reported. Dainik Jagran’s Kolkata bureau said the order puts election preparations on hold for now.

Kolkata wards from 144 to 209: what is being challenged

The state government issued the delimitation notification, which redraws ward boundaries, on 11 September, LiveLaw reported. The change adds 65 wards. By NewsPlainly’s calculation that is about 45% more wards across the city.

	Before	After the September notification
KMC wards	144	209
Change	65 more wards, 45.1% (NewsPlainly’s calculation)
Status on 6 November 2026	No poll notification on the new map until the challenge is decided

The appeal was filed by Dipu Das, a former ward councillor of 2005 to 2010, during what Bar and Bench called the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), regime. Jagran also identified the appellant as a former councillor.

The core argument is about who asked for the change. After the elected board’s term ended, the corporation’s powers were exercised by the Municipal Commissioner as administrator, the reports said. LiveLaw named the officer as Smita Pandey. Senior Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, for the appellant, argued that the redrawing rested on her recommendation, and that an employee of the corporation cannot stand in for the elected body the law requires.

The appellant’s side made other claims too, all of them allegations the court has not ruled on. Bar and Bench said the appeal raised unequal voter numbers across the new wards, and that Bhattacharya told the court a bill to amend the KMC Act was introduced in the Assembly only two days after the draft ward plan was put out for public objections. LiveLaw reported the petitioners’ claim that the boundaries were drawn to help one political party, a practice known as gerrymandering.

What the state said in reply

Advocate General Surajit Nath Mitra opposed the appeal. According to LiveLaw, he argued that the state government has the power to redraw wards even without a recommendation from the corporation, and that the administrator held the corporation’s powers while there was no elected council. He also questioned the timing: the notification came out in September, and the challenge arrived at the last minute.

Bar and Bench reported two more objections. Mitra said the appellant had not personally objected to the draft notifications, so could not challenge the process at this stage. He also relied on Article 243ZG of the Constitution, which limits courts from questioning laws on the delimitation of municipal wards. The single judge had relied on the same article on 29 October, Bar and Bench said, when refusing to stop the process.

KMC elections: what happens next

The main petition now goes back to the single judge. None of the reports read gave a date for that hearing, and none said whether the state plans to appeal Friday’s order. The News Mill, carrying inputs from the news agency Asian News International (ANI), reported that the West Bengal Congress had separately written to the election authorities about alleged irregularities in the ward plan.

For Kolkata’s voters, the result is simple for now: no election to the corporation can be called on the 209-ward map while the case is pending. For more news from the state, see our West Bengal page. Bar and Bench’s report with the order’s words is here.

Frequently asked questions

Are KMC elections 2026 postponed?

The Calcutta High Court on 6 November barred the State Election Commission from notifying KMC polls on the new 209-ward map until the challenge to the delimitation is decided.

How many wards does Kolkata Municipal Corporation have now?

144 under the old schedule. A September notification raises it to 209, and that change is under challenge.

Who challenged the KMC ward delimitation?

Dipu Das, a former ward councillor, according to Bar and Bench and Dainik Jagran.