The Supreme Court has directed six state governments to hold elections to municipal corporations and urban local bodies within 90 days, ruling that delays exceeding three years are unconstitutional and undermine the 74th Constitutional Amendment that guarantees periodic democratic governance of urban areas.

The direction applies to Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand — all of which have postponed urban local body elections beyond their constitutionally mandated five-year term.

State governments argued that delimitation exercises and the re-determination of ward reservations for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Class communities had created legal disputes that justified postponement.

The court rejected this reasoning, citing a series of previous judgments establishing that ward delimitation cannot be used as an indefinite excuse for delaying elections. "The right of urban residents to elect their municipal governments cannot be held hostage to administrative processes that states control and could expedite if they chose to," the bench observed.