The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has decided to hold the next hearing of the case on Wednesday in the matter of implementation of OBC reservation in civic body elections.
Along with this, the stay on issuing notification has also been extended till Wednesday. Counter affidavit was filed in the matter on behalf of the State Government.
Today, a hearing was held on the petitions filed in the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court regarding the Uttar Pradesh Municipal Elections 2022.
The Division Bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Srivastava is hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Rae Bareli resident social worker Vaibhav Pandey and others.
During the hearing the state government has said that the survey of Other Backward Classes (OBC) conducted in 2017 should be considered as the basis of reservation.Urban Development Department Secretary Ranjan Kumar has said in the affidavit that transgenders cannot be given reservation in elections.
The High Court had asked the state government under which provisions the administrators were appointed in the bodies.The government said that under the decision of the High Court of December 5, 2011, there is a provision
Issues of giving proper benefits of reservation to backward classes and rotation of seats have been raised in public interest litigations.
According to the PIL, the Triple Test Formula suggested by the Supreme Court was not considered in deciding the OBC reservation. The PIL alleged that under the decision of the Supreme Court, no reservation can be given to OBCs until the state government completes the formalities of the triple test. Whereas without completing this formality, the government issued notification of provisional reservation.
The government lawyer opposed the petition arguing that the government’s notification of December 5 is just a draft order. Before determining the reservation of OBCs in municipal elections, a commission will be constituted, which will assess the nature of backwardness in the bodies. After this, it will propose reservation of seats for backward classes. In the second phase, the number of OBCs will be tested by the local bodies and in the third phase, verification will be done at the government level.
Ward-wise counting of OBC class is done by the municipal bodies under the supervision of the district administration in the rapid survey. On the basis of this, while determining the seats for OBCs, a proposal for reservation is prepared and sent to the government.On behalf of the government, it has been said to conduct elections considering the OBC reservation of 2017 as the basis.
During the hearing held in December 14 , the state government prayed for three days’ time to file its counter affidavit, which was accepted by the court.
On December 13, a day’s time was sought from the government to file it’s reply. On this, the division bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Srivastava, fixed the next hearing of the matter for today.On Monday, the High Court stayed the announcement of the election date till Tuesday.
At the same time, it was said on behalf of the government that the notification of December 5 is just a draft order. The government has sought objections on this. The aggrieved can file his objections. Thus, this petition has been filed prematurely.
Earlier, the state government had issued a provisional notification for reservation of seats for mayor and chairman in 760 municipal bodies in 762. These include 17 Municipal Corporations, 199 Nagar Palika Parishads and 544 Nagar Panchayats chairman seats. However, reservations have been fixed for all 762 municipal bodies. Eight seats of mayor including Lucknow, Kanpur and Ghaziabad have been kept unreserved. In 2017, all these three seats were reserved for women.