Kolkata’s civic administration is set for an interim change across all 209 Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards after Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said the state government would appoint ward coordinators following a delay in the civic elections. The announcement came after the Calcutta High Court paused the poll process in connection with a challenge to the redrawing of ward boundaries.
Adhikari said coordinators would be appointed after November 30 to work with the administration in all 209 wards. He said the government wanted an elected board to take charge of the KMC but would not leave civic services without an administrative arrangement while the legal challenge continued.
“After Nov 30, in all 209 wards I will appoint coordinators, with whom the administration will work. It is clear in law. Let them keep on fighting,” Adhikari said, according to the report. He also said he would pursue the matter in a higher court, describing himself as the administrative head of the state.
The chief minister linked the election delay to the functioning of essential municipal services, including water supply, road cleaning, park maintenance, street lighting, traffic management and pothole repairs. The proposed arrangement would therefore place ward-level coordination with the administration at the centre of civic service delivery while the election dispute remains unresolved.
The ward coordinator system was previously used in 2020, when the KMC board’s tenure ended and municipal elections were delayed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Outgoing councillors were temporarily designated as ward coordinators and worked alongside an interim Board of Administrators under Section 14 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980. The arrangement ended after newly elected councillors assumed office.
The latest proposal follows opposition objections to the delimitation of KMC wards. Opposition parties said they had not been adequately consulted during the boundary-redrawing process and described the exercise as unscientific. Trinamool Congress leader Baiswanor Chattopadhyay alleged that the urban development department had carried out the delimitation in a way intended to benefit the BJP. Bengal Congress general secretary Ashutosh Chatterjee said objections raised during delimitation hearings had not been considered.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) also questioned the use of 2011 population data for ward delimitation in 2026, particularly while a Census exercise is under way, according to the report. Democratic Trinamool representative Sandipan Saha said a delay in the elections would affect ordinary residents.
State industry minister and BJP leader Tapas Roy said the party would not comment extensively on the court order and maintained that voters would eventually choose the city’s mayor. The immediate administrative question is how the proposed coordinators will operate across the 209 wards and how long the arrangement will remain in place. The next formal steps will depend on the court proceedings and the government’s action after November 30.
