A hearing on a petition seeking elections to 111 civic bodies in Bengal ended before a division bench of Calcutta High Court on Friday.

The division bench comprising Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj is likely to deliver its verdict early next week. The court, however, made no mention of the December 19 Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections.

During the hearing of the case on Friday, the bench asked both the state government and the state election commission to inform it when and in how many phases would they hold elections to the 111 civic bodies.

State advocate-general S.N. Mukherjee sought time till December 29.

He said fear about the possible spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19 had been preventing the state government from planning the dates for the pending 111 civic polls.

The issue of the pending polls had come up before the high court after a public interest litigation was moved by an individual who accused the Bengal government of not holding polls even after the expiry of the tenure of elected civic bodies.

The state units of the BJP and the CPM also joined the case and demanded civic elections on one day. They also said that poll results should be declared on a single day.

On December 6, the state election commission informed the court that it would like to hold civic elections in six to eight phases by May next year and underlined that fears about the possible spread of Covid-19 was the main reason for the main reason for delaying the elections so far.