Uttar Pradesh Government Challenges High Court Order On OBC Reservation In Local Polls In Supreme Court

The High Court on Tuesday annulled Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led UP government's draft notification on the urban local body elections and directed the state to hold the polls without OBC reservation "immediately".

Challenging the order in SC, the UP government said the Allahabad High Court cannot quash the December 5 draft notification. The appeal, filed through Advocate on Record Ruchira Goel, ?said the OBCs are a constitutionally protected section and the high court erred in quashing the draft notification.

The quashing of OBC reservation in local body polls came as a political setback to Adityanath as his government soon began to be criticised by the Opposition. Following the High Court order, Adityanath said polls would only happen with OBC reservation and that his government would approach the Supreme Court if required.

Why Allahabad High Court quashed OBC reservation

The High Court had rejected the OBC reservation in urban local body polls on grounds that Adityanath government failed to adhere to the "triple test formula" laid down by the Supreme Court.

The triple tests are three pre-conditions to provide such reservation. The Supreme Court set the following three conditions in the in the judgement of Vikas Kishanrao Gawali Vs. State of Maharashtra (2021):

(1) to set up a dedicated Commission to conduct contemporaneous rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness of the population in context of political participation?

(2) to specify the proportion of reservation required to be provisioned local body wise in light of recommendations of the Commission, so as not to fall foul of overbreadth;?

(3) in any case such reservation shall not exceed aggregate of 50 per cent of the total seats reserved in favour of SCs/STs/OBCs taken together.

The SC in the judgement further said the reservation cannot be notified without meeting these conditions.?

"In a given local body, the space for providing such reservation in favour of OBCs may be available at the time of issuing election programme (notifications). However, that could be notified only upon fulfilling the aforementioned pre-conditions...To put it differently, it will not be open to respondents to justify the reservation for OBCs without fulfilling the triple test, referred to above," said the SC judgement, as per a copy available online.

UP appoints 5-member panel

Following up on the assurance and in line with the tree test formula, the UP government on Wednesday appointed a five-member commission for going into the entire gamut of issues for providing reservation to the OBCs in urban local body polls.

The panel will be headed by Justice (Retd) Ram Avtar Singh. The four other members are retired Indian Administrative Service officers Chaub Singh Verma and Mahendra Kumar, and former legal advisors to the state Santosh Kumar Viskarma and Brajesh Kumar Soni.

The Lucknow bench of the high court had ordered that the state government should notify the polls "immediately" as the term of several municipalities would end by January 31, while annulling the December 5 draft notification.

It had said the term of the municipal bodies in the state has either ended or shall end by January 31, 2023.

Since the process of meeting the triple test is "arduous and is likely to take considerable time", it had directed the state government and the state election Commission to notify the elections "immediately" without the OBC quota.

What was UP draft notification annuled by High Court?

Earlier this month, the UP government issued a provisional list of reserved seats for mayors of 17 municipal corporations, chairpersons of 200 municipal councils and 545 nagar panchayats for the three-tier urban elections.

It had sought suggestions and objections to this draft within seven days.

According to the draft notification, four mayoral seats -- Aligarh, Mathura-Vrindavan, Meerut and Prayagraj -- were reserved for OBC candidates. Of these, the mayor's posts in Aligarh and Mathura-Vrindavan were reserved for OBC women.

In addition, 54 seats for chairpersons in the 200 municipal councils were reserved for OBCs, including 18 for OBC women.

Among the seats for chairpersons in 545 nagar panchayats, 147 were reserved for OBC candidates, including 49 for OBC women.

(With PTI inputs)