The civic body had earlier written to the ECI seeking clarity on how it should conduct the GBA elections and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls within the same timeframe, while highlighting existing challenges.
| Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN
With only 33.23% of enumeration forms distributed across Bengaluru Urban, compared with more than 62% Statewide, the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) is likely to send another request to the Election Commission of India (ECI), citing manpower crunch and immense pressure on Booth Level Officers.The civic body had earlier written to the ECI seeking clarity on how it should conduct the GBA elections and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls within the same timeframe, while highlighting existing challenges.A senior official told The Hindu that only 34.52 lakh enumeration forms have been distributed till Monday as of 12 p.m., while 69.35 lakh forms – 66.77% of the total are yet to be distributed. The official said the exercise is being carried out by just 8,972 BLOs, which has “shaken” routine administrative work and stretched the available manpower and resources thin.“Each BLO has to visit every household twice for the exercise. While distribution and digitisation itself take up a significant amount of time, most of the time is going into linking the 2002 electoral rolls. People are also facing immense difficulty in filling in the forms, and in many places, the BLOs are doing it on their behalf,” the official said.The official said that despite the entire administrative machinery being engaged in the SIR exercise, there is still a shortage of manpower, reflected in the slow progress in Bengaluru Urban compared with the rest of the State.As of Monday, the GBA had digitised only 0.70% of the total forms received – not even 1% – in the seven days since the exercise began.The GBA wrote to the ECI in May after the Supreme Court directed that civic elections be conducted before August 31. The apex court had made it clear that this was the ‘last chance’, pulling up the GBA for deploying “delaying tactics”. However, more than a month later, the civic body is yet to receive a response from the ECI.The official said that even after the SIR exercise concludes, at least a month would be required to complete training and other procedural formalities, pushing the election timeline further. Indicating that the long-pending civic polls are unlikely to be held anytime soon, the official said conducting them even by December would be “impossible”. The official argued that the GBA had sought time until September even before the SIR was announced in Karnataka, as the National Census exercise was under way then. “ We cannot conduct multiple large-scale exercises in parallel. It is beyond ambitious,” the official said. Published - July 06, 2026 07:39 pm IST
