In adherence to the Supreme Court's Friday order, the Madhya Pradesh State Election Commission has decided to proceed with panchayat polls according to the schedule, albeit without OBC seats.
The decision was taken at a meeting held on Saturday, state election commissioner Basant Pratap Singh said. Elections in 859 district panchayats, 6727 Janpad Panchayats, 22,581 sarpanchs and 362,754 panchs will be held in three phases on January 6, January 26 and February 16.
| Post | Total Seats | OBC-Reserved |
|---|---|---|
| ZP Members | 859 | 155 |
| Janpad Members | 6,727 | 1,273 |
| Sarpanchs | 22,581 | 4,058 |
| Panchs | 362,754 | 64,353 |
The commission had deferred the election process to the OBC seats late on Friday night itself after the SC stayed the election process for OBC reserved seats and asked the state to re-notify the seats to the general category. A letter in this regard was sent to the district collectors who are also the district election officers.
Singh said that the commission will be writing to the state government to take action to re-notify the OBC seats as per the order of the Supreme Court within a week and inform the same to the commission, so the elections to the deferred seats could be conducted as soon as possible. The election commissioner said that the rights for action in the matter of reservation of seats rest with the government.
The SC directed that while the election process on non-OBC seats could go on for now, the results for all the seats including the re-notified general category seats are to be declared together.
The election commission has also said that the nomination papers for the OBC reserved seats received till December 17, should be kept secured (for use later). The nomination process for the panchayat polls had started on December 13 and about 15,000 nomination papers (for all categories) have already been filed according to sources. The last date of filing of nominations is December 20.
Singh said decisions were taken after studying Supreme Court orders for Madhya Pradesh, a 2010 constitution bench judgment and a December 15 judgment from this year that pertained to Maharashtra; these were referred to by the SC in the stay order on Friday.
Entire OBC reservation not to be affected
Though the initial reaction to the SC order seemed to consider that the apex court had directed re-notifying all OBC reserved seats to general category, the actual situation is different. The order means that only the OBC reservation in seats that overshot the stipulations made in the two orders related to Maharashtra is to be re-notified.
Both the judgments pertaining to Maharashtra (referred to by the Supreme Court) make it clear that the reservations for OBCs cannot exceed 50 per cent of the total seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs taken together. Also, the overall vertical reservation (SC+ST+OBC) cannot exceed 50 peer cent of the seats. A provision of 27 per cent reservation for OBCs as made by Maharashtra violated these conditions, leading the SC to quash the reservation.
According to the State Election Commission statement, in MP, 155 district panchayat members posts (out of 859), 1,273 of 6727 janpad panchyat members' posts, 4,058 out of 22,581 sarpanch posts and 64,353 out of 3,62,754 posts were reserved for OBCs as of now.
Sources told THE WEEK that in MP, it was stipulated that up to 25 per cent of seats could be reserved for OBCs in a particular local body, but on the condition that the reservation for SC/ST and OBCs together would not overshoot 50 per cent reservation limit and that the minimum SC and ST reservation share (15 and 22 per cent respectively) would not be disturbed. The reservation was to be different in individual local bodies depending upon the population share in the area. For example in fifth schedule areas with high tribal population, there was provision for increasing the reservation for ST seats according to the population share. Thus, OBC reservation was not uniform across state but varied in individual local bodies and in several cases, reservation undertaken by the state government overshot the 50 per cent limit stipulation—which is why the SC stayed the implementation. These overshot seats will have to be re-notified to general category seats according to SC order.
Political blame game
Even as the election process on OBC reserved seats got deferred, a political blame game started in the state with both BJP and Congress accusing each other of being the reason for OBC reservation being stayed by the SC.
BJP leaders including urban development minister Bhupendra Singh, Guna MP K.P. Yadav and BJP spokesman Hitesh Bajpai blamed the Congress and particularly Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate Vivek Tankha for "getting the OBC reservation cancelled".
They referred to the fact that Tankha was appearing for the petitioners challenging the Panchayat election norms when the SC ordered staying of the election process on OBC reserved seats, implying that it was a doing of Congress and Tankha. Bhupendra Singh announced that a meeting of OBC leaders will be held on Sunday in Bhopal, where strategy will be drawn to ensure restoration of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in panchayat elections.
However, Congress leaders including Tankha, shot back. Quoting a tweet of Yadav, Tankha accused him of presenting wrong facts on the SC decision, which he said was a criminal fact. The senior lawyer underlined that the petition for which he was appearing in SC was about the rotation of reservation, which is a mandatory constitutional requirment for all categories and no point was raised about OBC reservation. He also said that the SC had passed the order in the presence of MP government and election commission counsels with reference to Maharashtra judgment. Tankha added that he was a well-wisher of the OBC community and was appearing for them in reservation-related petitions in MP High Court.
Former Panchayati Raj minister Kamleshwar Patel blamed the unpreparedness of the government counsels in SC for the stay. He said that the RSS and BJP have always been in favour of ending caste-based reservations and therefore the MP government violated constitutional norms in the panchayat election process in a manner that the matter went to SC. Yet, if the government had presented its side strongly in court, such an order would not have been issued. He said that Congress would take all steps in and out of courts to try to ensure that the OBC reservation is restored.
