MUMBAI, May 16 -- The state government is all set to begin the process of ward formation, nearly 10 days after the Supreme Court (SC) directed the State Election Commission (SEC) to conduct polls in 687 urban and rural local bodies. The long-pending elections will now be held in October or November. Speaking to the media in Pune on Thursday, ahead of a conclave for municipal commissioners and council chief executive officers (CEO), chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said, "Elections will be held adhering to the timeline. Our effort is to hold the polls within four months, as directed by the SC. If there's heavy rain, we may seek an extension of 15 to 20 days." On May 6, the two-judge bench of SC directed the SEC to conduct the local body polls in four months and notify the same in four weeks. "We have asked the state government to start forming wards for all bodies that are expected to go to the elections. We expect it to be done in 60 to 70 days, after which we will begin the process of the ward-wise reservation which takes another 15 days. We are following the prevailing laws in relation to the number of members per ward, number of the wards in the local bodies, and have asked the government to go align with it. Once the process is completed, we will apprise the apex court in next hearing on September 16," said Dinesh Waghmare, state election commissioner. The apex court stated that reservation for candidates belonging to other backward classes (OBC) in the elections would be according to the norm followed before the submission of the J K Banthia Commission report in 2022-a flat 27%. This has prompted SEC to seek clarity on if the reservation of 27% for OBCs is inclusive of the 50% reservation for all classes which prevailed till March 2021. "We are seeking legal opinion to clear the confusion, but prime facie our interpretation is that it would be up to 27%, with overall reservation not exceeding 50%," Waghmare said. Twenty-nine municipal corporations in the state have no elected bodies and are being governed by administrators for several years. In some corporations, such as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Navi Mumbai, the position of commissioners have been vacant for five years, while some other bodies including Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been without a mayor for more than three years. Thirty two of 34 district councils, all 248 municipal councils, 42 of 147 nagar panchayats and 336 of 351 panchayat samitis are governed by administrators. Another SEC official told HT that formation of wards would be hassle-free because the Mahayuti government in 2022 had changed the previous Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government's decision of increasing the wards and number of corporators per wards. "The number of wards and delimitation will be considered as they prevailed in 2017. Barring a few minor changes that arose due to merging of villages or conversion of villages into nagar panchayats, there would be no major changes in the wards' boundaries," said the official. The elections are expected to be held in two phases -- one phase each for urban and rural bodies. The local body elections have been delayed for over five years, because of litigations on various issues such as the OBC quota, government's decision of taking away SEC's powers of delimitation to itself, MVA government's decision of increasing number of wards, among others. The SC is hearing over 22 pending petitions. In March 2021, while hearing a petition SC told SEC that until a triple test was conducted on the empirical data collected, there would be no OBC quota in the local body polls. Thereafter, elections to five district councils were carried out without the quota, until the Banthia Commission report, following the triple test, was submitted in July 2022. The Banthia Commission ensured quota for each local body based on the population and up to 27%, unlike the flat 27% quota prevailing until then since 1994. On the other hand, although the Banthia commission, helped SC pave the way for the elections, a slew of other petitions challenging other government amendments were pending before it. The SC had in August 2022 ordered status quo owing to the pending petitions. Interestingly, the SC order given last week, appears to be contrary to its ruling in March 2021 - it had said then that there will be no OBC quota until the dedicated commission collates empirical data. "The fresh order states that the elections should be conducted without following the empirical data collated by the Banthia Commission," an official from the urban development department said. The petitions before SC were also filed because of the contradictory changes by MVA and the subsequent Mahayuti government. The Uddhav Thackeray government in March 2021, amended the law to take away SEC's powers of ward formation and passed an ordinance in August 2021 to increase the number of members in urban and rural local bodies based on the projected population. The government also increased the number of members per ward to three for political gains. With the change in government in June 2022, the then Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti reversed the decision and increased the number of members per ward to four....