SC agrees to hear UP govt’s plea on urban local body polls on Jan 4

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on Wednesday a plea filed by Uttar Pradesh government challenging the Allahabad High Court judgment on conducting the urban local body polls without reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned the special leave petition by the state government before a bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. Mehta asked the court to take up the matter on Tuesday but the court agreed to examine it on Wednesday.

The Uttar Pradesh government, last week, had set up a five-member commission for providing reservation to OBCs in the urban local body elections. The panel will be headed by Justice (retd) Ram Avtar Singh. The four other members are retired IAS officers Chaub Singh Verma and Mahendra Kumar, and former legal advisors to the state Santosh Kumar Viswakarma and Brajesh Kumar Soni. The members were appointed after governor approval.

The panel was formed after the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court quashed the UP government's draft notification on urban local body elections and ordered it to hold the polls without reservation for the OBCs. The high court delivered the verdict on pleas challenging the preparation of the OBC reservation draft without following the triple test formula prescribed by the Supreme Court.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, after the verdict, had said his government would set up a commission to extend reservation benefits to OBCs in the urban local body polls in the state. "Urban local body polls would be held only after extending the quota benefits to OBCs," he had added.

Yogi said, "A commission would be set up to fix reservation for OBCs in accordance with the triple-test formula..."

The Allahabad High Court quashed the notification issued by the UP government on December 5 for reservation of OBC in the urban local body elections. The seats, other than SC/ST, would be treated as general.

The high court noted that the apex court had stated that state legislations cannot simply provide uniform and rigid quantum of reservation of seats for OBCs in the local bodies across the state, that too, without a proper inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness by an independent commission about the imperativeness of such reservation.

The UP government had argued that all the previous governments since 1994 had used the rapid survey for the polls. However, it did not convince the high court.