Uttar Pradesh cabinet gives nod to OBC commission's report

LUCKNOW: Paving the way for an early urban local body elections in the state, the cabinet on Friday approved the recommendations of the dedicated other backward classes (OBC) commission that had been constituted to collect empirical data on the political backwardness of the community.
With the report and commission’s recommendations now in its possession, the Yogi Adityanath government is likely to submit it before the Supreme Court and take its permission to conduct elections after providing due representation to the OBCs.
On January 4, the apex court stayed the Allahabad high court's order to the state election commission to hold the urban local body polls without OBC reservation. After that, the UP government set up a dedicated OBC commission to ensure adherence to the SC order.
"Though the date for the next hearing has been scheduled for April 11, the government took the decision to approach the Supreme Court without further delay in order to hold the municipal polls at the earliest," a government spokesperson said.
Urban development minister AK Sharma said, “The state had constituted a five-member Uttar Pradesh State Local Bodies dedicated Backward Classes Commission on December 28 last year and requested it to provide the report within six months. The government is thankful to the commission for submitting the report much before the deadline.”
Giving details of the method adopted by the commission, a highly placed source of the urban development department said that it divided the state into five regions to capture the health, education and social status of the OBC community members. "Divided into western, eastern, northern, southern and Bundelkhand, the commission has assessed the present condition of the community in the five different regions of the state to understand the local caste dynamics and find out the best formula to offer representation to the members of the community," he added.
While data provided by the administration of 75 districts acted as the base, to delve deeper into the subject, the commission also went through the past findings of national sample survey office, national family health surveys and periodic labour force surveys.
After carrying out its study, the commission also went through the methodology followed by the urban development department while carrying out rapid surveys of the OBC community within municipal wards and a town or city and the procedure being followed while reserving the seats for OBC, SC, unreserved and female candidates during the 2012, 2017 and 2022 municipal polls.
It was also found that the rotational process or cyclic order for the purpose of reserving positions for mayor and chairmen of the municipal bodies was not being done as per the municipalities act while announcing the quota during 2017 polls and thereafter in December 2022.
The urban development department is going to announce the latest status of the positions on the basis of the commission’s findings. “But only after we get clearance from the Apex Court to go ahead with the elections,” said a senior government officer.
The commission was headed by former high court judge Ram Autar Singh and had four more members that included former IAS officers Chob Singh Verma and Mahendra Kumar and legal experts Santosh Kumar Vishwakarma and Brijesh Kumar Soni. The commission submitted its report to chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday evening and it was tabled before the cabinet for final approval and implementation during the upcoming municipal polls on Friday morning.
The state election commission had notified the election after fixing OBC quota as per the prevalent practices. The notification was challenged in the high court which asked the government to hold the elections without the OBC reservation as the 'triple test' formula had not been followed while fixing the quota'. It also ordered the state election commission to issue the notification immediately.
A day after the judgement, the state government set up a dedicated backward class commission to file a report about the political backwardness of the community. It also moved SC against this order. The apex court stayed the HC order and and directed that a panel appointed by the state government should decide the OBC quota related issues for the local bodies poll by March 31, 2023.
A Constitution bench of the SC in 2010 suggested a “triple test” for reserving seats in local body polls. It involves forming a dedicated commission to collect data after conducting rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness with respect to local bodies, specifying the proportion of reservation, and not exceeding the 50% quota cap.
A three-judge SC bench in 2021 made it mandatory for fixing quota for local body polls.