Bhubaneswar, Sept. 23: The State Election Commission will appoint administrators to all the 25 urban local bodies in western Odisha where polls could not be held due to demonstrations.

Protests are being held all over the western part of the state in favour of separate benches of Orissa High Court being set up at various locations there.

Special secretary of the commission Rabindra Nath Sahu said: “The appointments will be over before September 30.”

As the tenure of these bodies will be over on September 30 and elections have not been held, the administrators will run the organisations. The Opposition parties have criticised the government’s decision on the plea that there were no such provisions to appoint administrators to run the democratic bodies.

In a related development, a 40-member delegation of lawyers of undivided Koraput district today met chief minister Naveen Patnaik and demanded that a permanent high court bench be set in their region.

The three ministers from Koraput, Nabarangpur and Malkangiri districts — Lalbihari Himrika, Rabi Naryan Nanda and Ramesh Chandra Majhi — along with law minister Maheswar Mohanty were present when the delegation met Naveen.

The Rourkela Bar Association today decided to boycott court work and paralyse the functioning of the district administration offices till September 30 in favour of their demand to have a separate bench for the western Odisha. Their demand is that the bench should be located in Rourkela.

In yet another development, the Phulbani Bar Association today argued in favour of the high court bench being located in Phulbani town, the headquarters of Kandhamal district, while appearing before the Justice C.R. Pal Commission, which is probing where the permanent bench should be set up.

Phulbani Bar Association vice-president Asim Kumar Praharaj said Phulbani was surrounded by Ganjam, Gajapati, Rayagada, Balangir, Boudh and Nayagarh districts.

Angul and Sonepur districts are also close to Kandhamal. A bench can be set up at Phulbani town by forming a zone taking the nine districts into consideration, he said.

The association did not agree to establishment of a high court bench in Berhampur.

Praharaj said establishment of a high court bench at any other place of the southern revenue division would not be convenient for people of the Kandhamal region. He also made it clear that a high court bench at Sambalpur, Balangir or Bargarh would be inconvenient for people of Kandhamal as well.

The poor people of all the districts surrounding Kandhamal often face problem in meeting the expenditure required for coming to Cuttack. As a result, they cannot exercise their legal and constitutional rights, Praharaj said in his statement.

“The commission will have its next sitting tomorrow. The Keonjhar District Bar Association has been asked to give its deposition,” said the commission’s secretary Ajay Chandra Mohanty.