Devendra Fadnavis (File Photo) THE MAHA Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government can restore reservation of Other Backward Class in local bodies’ elections by furnishing empirical data, as sought by the Supreme Court to justify the reservation beyond 50 percent, Opposition Leader Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday.
Addressing the media at the party headquarters, Fadnavis said: “The Supreme Court struck down the OBC reservation in local bodies’ poll as the state did not comply with the apex court’s recommendations.” Also, it failed to furnish the data to justify the OBC reservation in zilla parishad and panchayat samiti, he added.
Fadnavis said, “During our government, we had issued an ordinance to protect the OBC reservation in local bodies. Unfortunately, the Uddhav Thackeray-led government allowed the ordinance to lapse.”
“All local bodies’ polls are unlikely to take place immediately due to the pandemic. The state can use this time to strategise on restoring the OBC quota in local bodies polls.”
Fadnavis attacked the state ministers for holding the Centre responsible for the apex court’s decision on the issue.
The former CM said, “All the ministers are busy politicising the issue. They are making baseless accusations against the BJP and the Centre without going into the details.”
“The BJP government had issued an ordinance on July 31, 2019. It had sought time to submit the data and the Supreme Court gave us time till August 28, 2019. The MVA government came to power on November 28, 2019 and allowed the ordinance to lapse. On December 13, 2019, the SC asked the state to justify the 50 percent reservation,” Fadnavis said.
“In the past 15 months, the state kept insisting on next date, but did not initiate any move to submit the data before the court. Instead, it admitted in the court that the reservation was exceeding 50 percent,” he alleged.
On March 4 this year, the SC observed that the state was just bidding more time and struck down the OBC reservation in local bodies.
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