Lucknow. The Lucknow bench of the High Court has given a major decision regarding the Uttar Pradesh civic elections. While giving the verdict, the court said that elections should be held on time without OBC reservation. After the decision of the High Court, all the seats reserved for OBCs will now be considered general. The court has given a 70 page judgement.
In a major blow to the state government, the Lucknow bench of the High Court has rejected the draft notification issued on December 5 for civic elections. Along with this, the court has ordered the state government to conduct the body elections without OBC reservation. The judgment was passed by a division bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Lavania together on 93 petitions filed on the issue.
The High Court has also rejected the notification issued by the government on December 12, through which the government had talked about posting administrators in those local bodies whose tenure is going to be completed soon.
what is the whole matter
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court had stayed the issuance of notification for the municipal elections in the state. The court had said that prima facie it appears that the government did not follow the triple test formula given by the Supreme Court in deciding the reservation of OBC quota. This order was passed by a bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Srivastava on the petition of Vaibhav Pandey.
Several petitioners, including Vaibhav Pandey, had filed separate petitions accusing the state government of not following due process in implementing OBC reservation in municipal elections. It was argued on behalf of the petitioners that the Supreme Court, in its judgment in Suresh Mahajan’s case this year, had clearly ordered that a triple test would be done before issuing OBC reservation in local body elections.
If the formalities of the triple test could not be done, elections would be held declaring all the seats except SC and ST seats as general seats. It was alleged that despite the clear guidelines of the apex court, the state government issued a draft notification on December 5, 2022, without triple test, which also included seats reserved for OBCs.