Yogi Govt Appoints 5-Member Panel on OBC Reservation in Urban Local Body Polls

GG News Bureau

Lucknow, 29th Dec. The Yogi government in Uttar Pradesh appointed a five-member commission on OBC reservation in urban local body elections on Wednesday, one day after the Allahabad High Court quashed its draft poll notification.

Justice (Retd) Ram Avtar Singh will preside over the panel. The remaining four members are retired Indian Administrative Service officers Chaub Singh Verma and Mahendra Kumar, as well as former state legal advisors Santosh Kumar Viskarma and Brajesh Kumar Soni. The members were appointed with the governor’s approval.

According to a notification on the panel’s constitution issued by the Urban Development department, the commission’s term will be six months from the day it takes charge.

The panel’s constitution comes a day after the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench quashed the state government’s draft notification on urban local body elections, ordering the polls to be held without reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

The order came in response to petitions challenging the preparation of the OBC reservation draft without adhering to the Supreme Court’s triple test formula.

Following the verdict, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stated that elections to urban local bodies would not be held unless OBCs were given reservations.

According to him, the state government will establish a commission on urban body elections and provide reservation to OBCs based on the triple test.

The ‘triple test’ formula calls for the establishment of a commission to conduct a ‘rigorous empirical inquiry’ into the nature of ‘backwardness’ in the context of local bodies, specifying the proportion of reservation based on the commission’s recommendations, and not exceeding the overall quota limit of 50%.

In a tweet earlier in the day, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya also stated that elections would be held only after reservation.

The court’s decision has sparked a fight between the BJP and the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP).

Maurya, the BJP’s OBC face in Uttar Pradesh, has drawn the ire of the SP, with senior leader Ram Gopal Yadav attacking OBC ministers in the Adityanath government.

Ram Gopal Yadav, the SP’s national general secretary, had said in a tweet on Tuesday, “The decision of ending the OBC reservation in the urban body elections is unfortunate. It is a conspiracy of the Uttar Pradesh government, the facts were deliberately not presented before the court.

“…60 percent of the population of Uttar Pradesh was denied reservation. The mouths of OBC ministers are locked. Maurya’s condition is like that of a bonded labourer.”

Maurya, on the other hand, retaliated earlier in the day, saying, “The SP and the Saifai family cannot tolerate a deputy chief minister from the backward class. The derogatory and indecent words being used by leaders of the Saifai family and their leaders, including Akhilesh Yadavji, towards me are well known.

“Wipe out of the SP and reservation to the backwards in the urban body elections are a foregone conclusion.”

Mulayam Singh Yadav’s native village is Saifai in Etawah district.

In a tweet earlier in the day, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said, “Trying to end reservation is the sinister conspiracy of the BJP’s negative politics.”

The party’s Uttar Pradesh unit chief, Naresh Uttam Patel, also blamed the BJP-led government for the high court’s decision to overturn the state government’s December 5 notification on OBC reservation.

“The BJP government did not present the facts before the court and now it has been forced to say that a triple test will be done. Why this delay? The BJP is doing all this knowingly,” he alleged.

Patel said the SP had continuously carried out programmes to “save the Constitution”.

The SP has been saying from the beginning that the BJP “is anti-reservation, anti-farmer and all sections are angry with it”, he said.

Mayawati, the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, has also attacked the state government over the verdict.

Apna Dal (S) Working President Ashish Patel, a minister in the BJP-led government, said on Tuesday that elections without the OBC reservation were “not fair from any point of view”.