The chairperson of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation has the authority to convene a meeting of all councillors, the high court said on Wednesday after hearing a petition from Mala Roy challenging the civic body secretary’s “unlawful” notice deferring the monthly session.

The court said Roy could convene a monthly session on June 19, a date she had proposed in the petition as the KMC chairperson.

The KMC secretary had deferred a monthly meeting of councillors scheduled for May 22, though Roy, who presides over the monthly sessions, did not order that.

Roy and several Trinamool councillors argued that the monthly board meeting is convened at the chairperson’s direction and can be postponed only with the chairperson’s approval.

The Trinamool councillors then held a meeting in the Councillors’ Club Room after finding the council chamber, the usual venue for the monthly session, locked. The meeting, however, did not have formal approval from the KMC’s executive authorities.

On Wednesday, a vacation bench of the high court allowed Roy to convene the monthly meeting on June 19. “It is a moral victory for me. I always maintained that the chairperson reserves the authority to convene, defer or cancel a monthly meeting,” Roy told Metro.

“I am happy that the high court has upheld my right to convene the meeting,” she said.

The last formally approved monthly meeting of councillors, where councillors get an opportunity to ask the board questions on civic services, was held on April 30, the day after Calcutta voted in the Assembly elections.

Roy said that rules mandate that at least one meeting of all councillors is held every month.

Trouble surfaced at the KMC headquarters on May 22 when the next meeting was scheduled but had been deferred only the day before.

Several Trinamool councillors defied the notice by KMC’s secretary postponing the meeting and arrived at the civic body. When the council chamber, the venue for the meeting, was not opened, the councillors sat down for a meeting at the councillors’ club.

Roy, as the KMC chairperson, presided over the meeting.

On Wednesday, the high court said it would consider at the next hearing whether the meeting held in the Councillors’ Club Room on May 22 should be accorded official recognition by the KMC authorities.