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Civic polls in Uttar Pradesh: Lucknow, seven other mayoral seats put on unreserved list
The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh reserves 35% of 17 mayoral posts for women. In 2017, too, a similar number (six) of mayoral seats were reserved for women candidates.
The Yogi Adityanath government on Monday set the stage for declaration of the urban local body polls as it announced the reservation formulae for mayoral seats, reserving about 35% of the 17 posts for women candidates.
The Lucknow mayoral seat that was reserved for women in 2017 is now among the unreserved mayoral seats that include Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Bareilly, Shahjahanpur, Firozabad and Ghaziabad.
In all, six mayoral seats have been reserved for women. Three of these are for women of the general category and three for women of the reserved category.
Among the 11 remaining seats, two have been reserved for OBCs (Prayagraj and Meerut) and one for Scheduled Castes (Jhansi) and eight are general seats.
The state’s urban development minister AK Sharma made the announcement on Monday evening.
In 2017, too, a similar number (six) of mayoral seats were reserved for women candidates.
Uttar Pradesh now has 762 urban local bodies, 109 more than in 2017, including 17 mayoral seats, 200 nagar palika parishads and 545 nagar panchayats.
The urban development minister said while Ayodhya, Saharanpur and Moradabad would now have women mayors from general category, Agra will have a woman mayor from the scheduled castes while Mathura-Vrindavan and Aligarh would have OBC women as mayors.
In 2017, too, when there were 16 municipal corporations, six mayoral seats were reserved for women.
They included Lucknow, Kanpur, Firozabad, Varanasi, Ghaziabad and Meerut.
Of the 200 Nagar Palika Parishad seats, 67 seats, about 33.5%, have been reserved for women.
This includes nine for SC women, 18 for OBC women and 40 for women from general category. In all, 27 seats have been reserved for SC and 54 for OBCs in this category.
The proportion of women representation at the Nagar Panchayat level is around 19.6%. Of the 544 Nagar Panchayats, 107 seats have been reserved for women this time, numerically lower than what it was in 2017 when 145 of the 438 seats were reserved for women.
This time, 73 seats have been reserved for Scheduled Castes, one for the Scheduled Tribes and 147 for the OBCs in this category.
The urban development department had earlier released the ward reservation list for 48 of the 75 districts across the state.
Apart from the BJP that had 14 mayors in 16 seats in 2017 (the BSP had two), as well as the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress, several other political players, too, are wanting to use the urban local body polls to test themselves ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the most populous state.
While the Aam Aadmi Party, fresh from its spectacular win in Punjab, will contest the urban local body polls again (in 2017 it contested these polls without much impact), the AIMIM and some other political parties, too, are planning to contest the elections.
The AIMIM has even started finalising candidates for the urban polls in the state, where the BJP has traditionally done well.
