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After Supreme Court rap, Maharashtra looks to table 2 bills on OBC quota
Days after the Supreme Court shot down attempts by the Maharashtra government to reserve 27% seats for OBCs in local bodies, the state government is set to table two bills in the legislature on Monday to ensure polling is not held without quota.
Days after the Supreme Court shot down attempts by the Maharashtra government to reserve 27% seats for other backward classes (OBCs) in local bodies, the state government is set to table two bills in the legislature on Monday to ensure polling is not held without quota, people familiar with the matter said.
The two bills – Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Maharashtra Municipal Corporations, Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships (Amendment) Bill 2022 and Maharashtra Gram Panchayats and Maharashtra Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samitis (Amendment ) Bill 2022 – have found support from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and are likely to be passed without discussion, they added.
“We are tabling two bills to make amendments in the laws governing rural and urban local bodies. The bills will be tabled in both the houses on Monday. They are expected to be passed without any discussion,” an official from the rural development department said, seeking anonymity.
The bills are being introduced on the lines of the law introduced by Madhya Pradesh to ensure that local bodies elections are not held without OBC reservation.
The two bills would give powers to the government on the process of delimitation of ward boundaries and formation of wards, which currently lay with the state election commission. It will also give the state government the liberty to collect the empirical data mandatory to restore the OBC quota in local body polls.
The Supreme Court on Thursday had trashed an interim report by the state backward commission recommending reservation for OBCs over “lack of rationale” and “absence of contemporaneous data”.
On Saturday, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said that they were postponing the elections to the local bodies by three months. “We will need three months to complete the compilation of the empirical data in the format suggested by the Supreme Court. It will be completed by talking to experts and senior officials before approaching the apex court again (for the quota). Till then the local bodies will have administrators appointed,” he said.
Sachin Rajurkar, general secretary of Rashtriya OBC Mahasangh, raised doubts over the intention of the state government. “The state has announced to table a new bill on the lines of the one passed in Madhya Pradesh but the neighboring state had done this with the permission of the apex court. Is the state government going to inform the court after passing the bill? Even if it gets five to six months by passing the bill, is there conviction to complete the empirical data in that much period? The state government is fully responsible for the quashing of the quota and the delay in collating the empirical data. It has also been giving us step motherly treatment by not extending us the other schemes and benefits like given to the Marathas,” he said.
