Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Supreme Court’s decision mentions that the State Election Commission should declare all the results of panchayat polls together. So now, even if the elections on the posts other than reserved for the OBC are held, the result cannot be declared, said an official of the State Election Commission (SEC).
The SEC shot a letter to the state government’s Panchayati Raj Department on Saturday asking them to de-notify seats reserved for OBC posts. Sources say that the state government can take a couple of days to de-notify those posts. After this, these seats will fall into the general quota but reservation for the OBC needs to be done again and that will take considerable time, added the official.
Another challenge before the SEC is to implement the Supreme Court’s decision that says that reservation should not exceed the 50% limit. At present, an average of 15% posts are reserved for Scheduled Caste, 20% for Scheduled Tribe and 25% for the OBC. This takes overall reservation to 60% that exceeds the limit prescribed by the apex court of 50%.
As far as OBC reservation requires to be implemented, apex court has asked the state authorities to comply with the Triple Test before implementing it. For this, a dedicated commission needs to be constituted to conduct contemporaneous empirical inquiry into backwardness of OBC.
Secondly, proportion of reservation is required to be provisioned local body-wise according to recommendations of the commission. Third test says that overall reservations including that for SC, ST and the OBC should not exceed 50%.
Petitioner Syed Zaffar said that local body elections cannot be conducted without proper OBC reservation. “The Election Commission should cancel the elections altogether and constitute a commission to conduct a triple test and provide reservation to OBCs. If it is not done, we will take it through court,” said Zaffar.
