The Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court will take up the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding the implementation of OBC reservation in Municipal Local Body Elections on Saturday.
Despite the start of Winter vacations from Saturday, the High Court will hear the matter tomorrow. The stay on the notification of election dates will also remain in force till Saturday.
Hearing on the PIL was again adjourned on Friday due to paucity.
Earlier, the hearing could not be held on Thursday, when all the petitions related to the matter were listed before the Division Bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Lavania.
Now all the petitions will be heard on Saturday. The matter has been listed consecutively from December 20.
During the previous 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 on 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.
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.