UP: Urban local body polls to be held on May 4, 11

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission on Sunday announced urban local body polls in the state in two phases, on May 4 and 11, three months after the Allahabad High Court quashed the state government's draft notification providing OBC reservation in the civic elections.

State Election Commissioner (SEC) Manoj Kumar issued the notification in this regard. ''The voting for the urban local body polls will be held on May 4 and 11. The counting of votes will take place on May 13,'' he told reporters here.

Model code of conduct across the state has come into force after the issuance of the election notification. ''There will be elections for a total of 14,684 posts in 760 urban local bodies in the state,'' SEC Kumar later said in a statement. Earlier in the day, the state government released the final list of reserved seats for mayors of municipal corporations, chairpersons of city councils and city panchayats.

As per the final list, the mayor seat in Agra has been reserved for SC (female), Jhansi for SC, Shahjahanpur and Firozabad for OBC (female), Saharanpur and Meerut for OBC, and Lucknow, Kanpur and Ghaziabad reserved for women. Eight mayor seats of Varanasi, Prayagraj, Aligarh, Bareilly, Moradabad, Gorakhpur, Ayodhya, Mathura-Vrindavan will be unreserved, the government notification said.

The Supreme Court on March 27 had paved the way for holding the local body polls as it allowed the SEC to issue a notification in this regard in two days with an OBC quota in terms of a report of the Uttar Pradesh Backward Classes Commission.

The state government had moved the top court with its appeal against the December 27 order of the high court, saying the high court cannot quash the December 5 draft notification which provided for reservation of seats in the urban civic body polls for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) apart from those for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women.

After the high court's December 27 order, the government had appointed a five-member commission for going into the entire gamut of issues for providing reservation to the OBCs in the urban local body polls.

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

In his statement on Sunday, SEC Kumar also said elections will be held for 17 seats of mayor, 1,420 of corporator, 199 of nagar palika parishad chairperson, 5,327 of nagar palika parishad member, 544 of nagar panchayat chairperson and 7,178 seats of nagar panchayat member.

Kumar had said on April 3 that after receiving the final information of reservation by the state government, the notification of the state's urban body elections would be issued.

The local body elections will witness the political parties, including the ruling BJP and principal opposition Samajwadi Party, trying to strengthen themselves ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The politically crucial state sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha.