Calcutta High Court on Tuesday rejected three separate public interest litigation petitions challenging the validity of the state government’s decision to form an administrative board to run the Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s day-to-day work till civic polls are held.

The Calcutta corporation polls, due in May this year, could not be held because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Though the corporation’s five-year term ended on May 7, the state government through an order on May 6 formed a board of administrators headed by former CMC mayor Firhad Hakim to run it.

Challenging the validity of the formation of the board, the PILs had contended that the state government was not within its rights to form a board without the legislative Assembly’s sanction.

The division bench of Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Aniruddha Roy upheld the constitution of the board of administrators to supervise the functioning of the CMC. It also said that there was no need for the government to enact a legislation or issue an ordinance to form the board.

“Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures,” the bench observed.

The judgment was significant since the state had set up similar boards in many municipalities of Bengal where civic elections had to be postponed because of the spread of the coronavirus.

The bench, however, said in its order that “the court desires that the state should now initiate the process for holding the civic body elections as early as possible”.