E-Paper
Reservation of village panchayats - Complaints galore over census data-caste population gap
: A significant gap between ground reality with regard to numerical strength of various castes and a decade-old census data in thousands of villages has prompted villagers in large numbers to raise questions over the categorisation/reservation of their village panchayats for the forthcoming rural elections in UP, people dealing with the issue in the panchayati raj department said
: A significant gap between ground reality with regard to numerical strength of various castes and a decade-old census data in thousands of villages has prompted villagers in large numbers to raise questions over the categorisation/reservation of their village panchayats for the forthcoming rural elections in UP, people dealing with the issue in the panchayati raj department said.
Though the compilation of the objections received in various districts is still in progress, a higher number of complaints are said to have been received this time in all districts forcing chief secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari to convene a meeting with senior panchayati raj department officials to discuss the issue last week.
District magistrates issued lists categorising all around 58,000 village panchayats as per the government’s reservation policy on March 2 and 3 inviting objections to the same by March 8. The final lists will be published between March 10 and 12 after disposing of objections.
Director, panchayati raj, Kinjal Singh said people registering their objections and DMs making disposal of the same was a routine practice adopted every time rural polls were held. “Complaints and objections will be complied by Wednesday evening. Then district-level officials will dispose them of on merit after which final lists will be brought out,” she said.
According to an official aware of the matter, a large number of complaints have come broadly on two counts. First, in number of cases there is a mismatch between the census data and the actual position of population on the ground. “There are complaints that census data shows people belonging to a particular caste living in a village while actually nobody of that caste lives there or their numerical strength is far less than sown in the census.
“Since village panchayats were reserved on the basis of the 2011 census, a lot of complainants have raised questions on the categorisation alleging that incorrect census data must have affected the reservation,” he said.
Second reason, according to him, is changes in the composition of hundreds of village panchayats in over 40 districts due to their complete or partial merger in urban areas during the last five years.
“It has been seen that many village panchayats have been reserved for STs while there is no ST population there or many other village panchayats have been reserved for ST, SC or BC despite the fact the population under these categories there is less than 2 and as per rules a village panchayat cannot be reserved for a caste if population of that caste in a village is less than two,” he said.
This, the official said, happened because of decrease in number of ST, SC or OBC population in many villages either due to death of residents or their migration to other places since the 2011 census or because of the changes forced by merger of rural areas into cities and towns.
“But majority of complaints/objections must be frivolous ones filed by vested interests who wanted a particular panchayat to be reserved for a particular caste or put that under an unreserved category but the categorisation did not happen according to their desire,” the official said.
“Such people, as it always happens, are now desperate to get the categorisation of their village panchayat modified and hence filed false complaints,” he added.
