Mumbai: Chief secretary writes to SEC for deferring bypolls for vacant OBC seats

A day after the Supreme Court asked the State Election Commission (SEC) to decide on its own in regard to postponing byelections of local bodies, sources said that bypolls for the vacant OBC seats in five zilla parishad and 33 panchayat samitis are likely to be deferred.

On Wednesday, Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte wrote to the SEC requesting that the bypolls be deferred citing the Covid-19 situation.

“A letter has been sent to the SEC today highlighting the Covid situation and reiterating the request to defer the bypolls,” said Kunte.

This comes a day after Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said in the state Assembly that with the SC instructing the SEC to take a decision on deferring the bypolls, the chief secretary will write to the poll panel.

State Election Commissioner U P S Madan confirmed that his office has received Kunte’s letter. “We will go through the letter and take a decision tomorrow. The apex court has said the commission can take a decision on its own. So, we will decide accordingly,” he said.

Sources said that factors such as Covid-19 positivity rate, number of cases and infections caused by the new delta plus variant among others are likely to be taken into account by the commission while taking a decision.

On June 22, the SEC had announced bypolls for the 200 OBC seats in the five zilla Parishads and 33 panchayat samitis in the districts of Dhule, Nandurbar, Washim, Akola and Nagpur.

Bypolls to OBC seats in these local bodies were to be held subject to the outcome of petitions before the the Supreme Court on exceeding the 50 per cent reservation limit. On March 4, while quashing OBC reservation in local bodies, the SC had ordered that the OBC seats be vacated while asking the SEC to initiate bypolls for these seats from the general category.

The move had angered the OBC community in the state, resulting in OBC leaders and ministers Chhagan Bhujbal and Vijay Wadettiwar raising the issue in the Cabinet. Subsequently, Kunte had written to the SEC requesting to defer the polls citing the covid situation. However, the SEC had then expressed its inability to do so by stating that the bypolls were being held as per SC orders.

Officials said the SEC had then rejected the state’s request with a view that it would be a contempt of SC. “With SC itself now asking the poll panel take a decision, the question of contempt of the court does not arise,” said an official.