Lucknow (The Hawk): The Allahabad High Court's ruling directing the holding of urban local body elections would be challenged by the Uttar Pradesh administration as soon as possible in the Supreme Court.
"The administration has decided to move the Supreme Court against the HC order to exclude the backward reservations from these polls in the state," said a spokeswoman for the state government. "The government is resolved to grant quota benefits to the OBCs in the urban local body polls."
He continued, "Urban local body and panchayat elections have already been held on the basis of the same fast survey adopted by this government."
Although the High Court ordered that the elections be held by January 31, 2023, it is currently improbable that they will take place anytime soon.
The legal team and representatives from the department of urban development will plan the following steps.
The state government will then create a special commission with the sole purpose of evaluating the political backwardness of the OBCs across different wards and localities within the 762 urban local bodies.
Senior officials in the urban development division disclosed that the state's current commission for OBCs lacked the authority to gather information, make it available, or compile a report on the political backwardness of the OBCs in the state.
An official stated, "The existing commission's mandate is to ensure that no OBC individual's rights are ignored while granting them reservation in government positions, educational institutions, initiatives introduced by government departments, and other such concerns."
The official continued, "A new commission to gather empirical data on political backwardness could be set up quickly, but gathering the data from 762 towns in UP, evaluating it, and making recommendations would be possible only after an exhaustive exercise that could take several weeks in a large state like UP.
The state's legal team has begun communicating with its counterparts in Maharashtra, where a special commission was established in March to gather empirical data on OBC caste households in order to satisfy the triple test formula.
The department will once more make the announcement regarding the reservation for the jobs of mayor and chairpersons after the data (as per the mandate under the triple test) is ready in Uttar Pradesh.
(Inputs from Agencies)