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Centre plans review plea in Supreme Court for OBC quota in local body elections
The Union government’s proposal to file a review petition comes after the Supreme Court, in two separate delivered over the past fortnight, struck down 27% reservation for OBCs in local body elections in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh
NEW DELHI: The Union government plans to file a review petition in the Supreme Court to allow political reservation of other backward classes (OBC) in local bodies and municipal corporations “for the time being” till the states meet the criteria set by the top court, a government statement issued late on Monday said.
The government plan comes after the Supreme Court, in separate verdicts delivered over the past fortnight, struck down 27% reservation for OBCs in local body elections in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh citing the absence of empirical data on OBC.
“Government is also considering moving a review petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court to allow political reservation of OBCs in the local bodies/municipal corporations for the time being till the States comply with the triple test criteria set forth by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the statement by the union ministry of social justice and empowerment on Monday said.
The ministry said it is consulting the law ministry and other stakeholders, including ministries of panchayati raj, parliamentary affairs and home affairs, in this regard.
The triple test outlined by the Supreme Court includes setting up a dedicated commission to conduct a rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness as regards local bodies within the state, specifying the proportion of reservation required to be provisioned local body-wise according to the commission’s recommendations, and ensuring that reservation doesn’t exceed 50% of the seats reserved in favour of SCs, STs and OBCs taken together.
On December 6, a bench of justices AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar stayed the Maharashtra government’s ordinance through which the state sought to introduce 27% reservation for OBCs in all zilla parishads and panchayat samitis without collecting data on OBCs in every municipal body seat. “Your political compulsions cannot be the basis to undo our judgment,” the bench remarked.
The state government asked the court to let them access caste data collected by the Centre under the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011. But this request was not accepted after the Centre insisted that the data was unusable. On December 15, the top court told Maharashtra that local body elections in the state will be held without any OBC reservation.
On December 17, the same bench stayed OBC quota in civic polls in Madhya Pradesh underlining that “it (also) was in conflict with the decision of the Constitution Bench of this court in K. Krishna Murthy & Ors. versus Union of India and reiterated by a three-judge bench in Vikas Kishanrao Gawali vs. State of Maharashtra (decided on December 15),” the bench noted.
