Chandigarh, April 2 -- Paving the way for civic body polls in the state, the Punjab and Haryana high court has upheld Punjab government's delimitation exercise of wards for municipal councils and municipal corporations completed on or before December 31, 2025. Notably, the Punjab government had on March 18 decided to withdraw notifications regarding delimitation of wards for municipal councils and municipal corporations issued after December 31, 2025. Following this, the dispute was pending only about those civic bodies where the exercise was completed by December 31. The petitions were from different districts, challenging the exercise of delimitation of wards. In January, the high court had asked the Punjab government not to proceed with the process of the civic body polls for nine municipal corporations and approximately 100 municipal councils and municipal committees in view of these petitions. The petitioners had argued that the process of delimitation, which has been initiated or finalised after December 31, can't be done in view of the August 2025 notification of the Centre with pan-India directions that no change is to be undertaken regarding the boundaries of the towns, districts, including the wards which are existing in a town in view of the planning for the Census 2027. The petitions dealing with this set of allegations were disposed of on March 18 after the government withdrew delimitation exercise in the case of those where notification came after December 31, 2025. In the second set of petitions, dealt with in this judgment, allegations were that proper time was not given to submit objections in many cases and non-publication of draft notifications. The allegations were also of not depicting the boundaries of wards to be delimited in the notifications as there existed certain blanks and the boundaries of such wards were not clear. The court found that there was no violation of norms by the government in giving shorter periods of time for submission of objections to the draft notifications. While dismissing these petitions, the high court bench of justice HS Sethi and justice Vikas Suri observed that in the absence of any challenge to the final notification delimiting the wards of the respective municipal councils/municipals corporations, no ground is made out for the grant of any relief regarding the final delimitation of wards. The court also observed that once, the boundaries of such wards to be delimited were visible in the map which was attached with the draft notification, a mere discrepancy that in certain draft notifications, boundaries of certain wards were not clear, will not vitiate the exercise so undertaken....