Amendment passed to defer poll in new ULBs amidst BJP Opposition

The Opposition BJP today accused the government of trying to defer elections to urban local bodies in the garb of OBC reservation considering the public sentiment being against Congress regime.

The opposition legislators today registered their strong protest against the amendment in the Himachal Pradesh Municipal (Amendment) Bill 2025, introduced in the house yesterday. The reasons cited for the amendment in the Act is to facilitate deferment of the elections in the newly constituted urban local bodies (ULB) for a period up to two years due to lack of basic infrastructure like staff, office space and financial resources.

The amendment was passed by voice vote amidst protest by the Opposition as the Speaker Kuldeep Pathania put it to voting in the Vidhan Sabha. Many Opposition MLAs demanded that these ULBs must be de-notified as they had been created against public sentiment amidst protests by the local people.

Panchayati Raj Minister Anirudh Singh addressed the concerns echoed by the Opposition.

“The urban population is growing fast and there is an urgent need to regulate haphazard construction activity. There are 3615 gram panchayats in the state and many fringe areas here have witnessed urban sprawl,” he said.

He informed that urban population had increased to 9.16 lakh in 2024 by over 60 per cent as compared to 2012. He said there was no constitutional violation in this amendment and some other states like Haryana, Assam and Maharashtra too had deferred ULB elections.

The minister said the survey of OBC population was done on November 4, 2010 only for rural areas, leaving out the urban areas.

“We do not want that there should be injustice with the OBCs so the survey is underway,” he said.

Leader of Opposition (LoP) Jai Ram Thakur said the state government was violating constitutional norms by way of these amendments only to defer elections. “It is shocking that the state government created three municipal corporations, three nagar parishads and 17 nagar panchayats against public sentiment. This amendment can be passed by the House as Congress has a majority but it will not be able to withstand legal scrutiny,” Thakur said.

“In the first place these should be de-notified as they were created on irrational considerations. If you are rigid and adamant on your decision then why are you running away from holding elections,” said Naina Devi MLA Randhir Sharma.

Una MLA Satpal Singh Satti said seeing the public mood against the Congress regime, the state government is preparing ground to postpone elections to all urban local bodies in the state in the garb of OBC reservation.

Sundernagar MLA Rakesh Jamwal, Barsar MLA ID Lakhanpal, Bilaspur MLA Trilok Jamwal, Churah MLA Hans Raj, Balh MLA Inder Gandhi, Sarkaghat MLA Daleep Thakur and Hamirpur MLA Ashish Sharma also registered their opposition to the amendment.