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Bihar plans to move SC against HC order on local body polls
Bihar’s parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said the state government was left with no option but to approach the Supreme Court to ensure justice for the EBCs, who “got identity due to the efforts of chief minister Nitish Kumar”.
Patna: The Bihar government on Wednesday said it will challenge before the Supreme Court an order passed by the Patna high court directing the state election commission (SEC) to hold the urban local body elections “only by immediately re-notifying the seats reserved for OBCs, treating them as general category seats”.
Reservation of seats for other backward classes (OBCs) and extremely backward classes (EBCs) in Bihar’s urban local body elections without following the triple test criteria as laid down by the Supreme Court was “illegal”, a division bench of the high court ruled on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Bihar’s parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said the state government was left with no option but to approach the Supreme Court to ensure justice for the EBCs, who “got identity due to the efforts of chief minister Nitish Kumar”.
“The reservation is not a new thing. It has been there since 2007. This has been a conscious decision of the state government to give identity to backward classes,” the senior Janata Dal (United) leader told reporters. “The decision of the HC to re-notify seats reserved for other backward classes in urban local body elections as general category seats before holding elections will be injustice with them.”
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“How can the Bihar government accept this decision under any situation? After all, the quota was introduced by the Nitish Kumar government only. Reservation has been implemented in the urban local body elections since 2007,” he said. “If suddenly their seats are given to general category, it will be injustice to them. Naturally, the high court’s order will be challenged in the apex court, as that remains the only option before the state government.”
Soon after the high court’s ruling, the SEC deferred the two-phase polls for 224 urban local bodies scheduled on October 10 and October 20. Terms of most of these urban local bodies expired in June and they have been run by administrators since. “New dates of polls will be notified in due course,” the SEC’s circular said.
Soon after the ruling, senior JD(U) leader and the party’s parliamentary board chairman Upendra Kushwaha also expressed his displeasure over the HC verdict. On Wednesday, Kushwaha along with JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan said they will take the issue to the masses to “expose BJP’s anti-quota approach”.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) severed ties with the BJP in August, bringing to an abrupt end to the NDA government in the state. He then joined hands the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and four other parties to form the Grand Alliance government.
A day ago, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the court had clearly outlined that reservation of seats should be done by the recommendations of a dedicated commission set up for identifying the backwardness of reserved seats. “Chief minister Nitish Kumar was adamant on his stand for holding polls by ignoring the suggestions of the advocate general and SEC,” the Rajya Sabha member said.
The high court on Tuesday also reminded the SEC to “review its functioning as an autonomous and independent body, not bound by the dictates of the government of Bihar”.
“The state of Bihar has not undertaken any exercise by which the criteria adopted for providing reservations under socio-economic/educational/services have been adopted for the purposes of ensuring electoral representation of Other Backward Classes, including Extremely Backward Classes (EBC),” observed the bench of chief justice Sanjay Karol and justice Sanjay Kumar in its 86-page verdict. “As such, we hold… action of the government as also the (State) Election Commission in reserving the seats for the OBC/EBC category… to be illegal.”
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Ruling on a bunch of writ petitions filed against the local body polls, the bench further said: “Our direction, similar in nature, is based on the dictum of the Supreme Court.”
In March last year, the Supreme Court while hearing a case pertaining to Maharashtra local body polls had laid down the “triple test” for implementing reservations for OBCs in local body polls. It held that for implementing OBC reservation in local bodies, the state must constitute a dedicated OBC commission, collect data on their backwardness, and provide reservation in such a manner that the total reservation — with SC, ST and OBC put together — does not exceed the 50% ceiling.
The high court noted that the commissions — formed under the Backward Classes Act and the Commission for Extremely Backward Classes — were for purposes independent and distinct from ascertaining political backwardness. “The same were for the purposes of evaluating and computing socially and economically backward castes of any character,” it observed.
The bench also put the spotlight on the large number of overlapping statutes muddying the waters rather than facilitating smooth functioning of providing reservations and asked Bihar to “consider enacting a comprehensive legislation pertaining to reservations in elections to local bodies, urban or rural, to bring the state seamlessly in line with the directions issued by apex court”.
