Cuttack: The municipal council has decided that there would be no delimitation of wards and change in reservation status of seats by the corporation for the 2019 civic polls.

The State Election Commission had desired that the government should complete the delimitation of wards and reservation of seats of the Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Berhampur municipal corporations by April 20 to hold elections to the three civic bodies on time.

Accordingly, the director of the municipal administration had asked the respective municipal commissioners "to complete the process of delimitation of wards and reservation of seats by March 21".

The communication from the director had triggered speculations about reorganisation of wards and change in reservation status of seats by the civic body. Subsequently, the speculations led to apprehensions about several sitting councillors becoming ineligible for re-election from their wards in the forthcoming election to urban local bodies in April 2019. A Congress councillor from ward No. 23, Sheikh Shami Ullah, even went to the extent of challenging delimitation of wards and reservation of seats in the civic body in Orissa High Court.

On March 9, the high court posted the matter for hearing after three weeks and sought responses from the authorities concerned.

However, municipal commissioner Bikash Mohapatra said the council had already decided that there would be no delimitation of wards and reservation of seats.

"In fact, there was no need for undertaking delimitation of wards and change in reservation status of seats as the State Election Commission expected the process to be completed according to 2011 census," Mohapatra said.

"Wards were reorganised and the reservation status of seats had been changed according to the 2011 census for the urban local body polls in 2014," he said.

Under the delimitation exercise, the number of wards were increased from 54 to 59 taking into consideration the city's population of 6,10,189, according to the 2011 census. The five new wards were created by division of ward Nos. 1, 2, 3, 21, 22, 52 and 53 and only 18 wards were left unreserved.

Thirty wards will continue to be reserved for women candidates - 17 of them reserved for general category women candidates, eight for backward class women candidates, four for scheduled caste women and one for scheduled tribe women.