Jharkhand to hold four-phase panchayat polls in May without OBC reservation

The polls, however, will be held without any reservation for the other backward classes and as a result 9,470 seats of the total 63,701 up for grabs across the state will now be under open category.

Jharkhand will conduct three-tier panchayat elections in four phases from May 14 to May 27, the state election commission announced on Saturday.

A total of 1.96 crore voters will exercise their franchise in Jharkhand, out of which 95,45,702 are women and 81 are transgenders. Voting will be held through ballot papers across 53,480 polling booths, officials said. (PTI PHOTO.)

The polls, however, will be held without any reservation for the other backward classes and as a result 9,470 seats of the total 63,701 up for grabs across the state will now be under open category. The OBC quota has been done away with as the government decided to hold the delayed polls without meeting the triple test benchmark set by the Supreme Court for states in quantifying OBC quota in local body elections.

“One thing unique in this election will be that all OBC seats (9,470) would be in open category. The districts have been directed to notify all OBC seats, under female and others category, in open category,” said DK Tiwary, state election commissioner.

However, the quota for other categories will continue. Of the 63,701 seats, 21,290 seats are reserved for scheduled tribes and 6,213 seats are reserved for scheduled castes, while 35,196 seats will remain unreserved.

Panchayat polls were scheduled to be held in January 2021. However, the three-tier local body elections had been postponed twice since then. Defending the decision to go ahead with the polls without getting surveys done to meet the triple test benchmark, chief minister Hemant Soren had announced in the recently-concluded budget session that any further delay in elections would affect funding to the local bodies from the Centre.

As per the cut-off date of January 1, 2022, a total of 1.96 crore voters will exercise their franchise, out of which 95,45,702 are women and 81 are transgenders. Voting would be held through ballot papers across 53,480 polling booths, officials said.