Supreme Court puts OBC Reservation Ordinance on hold.

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed an Ordinance that would have allowed up to 27 percent political reservation to candidates from Other Backward Class (OBC) communities, a fortnight before district council elections in Bhandara and Gondia, as well as by-polls in 4,500 Gram Panchayats across the state.

 

The order was issued after the Supreme Court heard two petitions, one of which challenged the provisions of an Ordinance that allowed OBC candidates to run for political office in all Maharashtra local bodies uniformly. "The State Election Commission shall desist from carrying out the Election Programme already notified in respect of reserved seats for 'OBC category only' in the  concerned local bodies," a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and C T Ravikumar said but made it clear that the election process for the remaining seats would go on.

 

After the Supreme Court struck down a clause that guaranteed OBC candidates’ 27 percent political reservation in local body elections in March, the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) administration issued an Ordinance modifying two statutes that govern rural and municipal local governments on September 21. The 50 percent reservation ceiling was frequently broken because the state also gives reservations to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC and ST) candidates. The Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional and ordered the state to perform an empirical assessment on the socioeconomic disadvantages of OBC communities before determining the amount of reservation.

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the reservation given by the ordinance could not be implemented unless a commission was established and data on the appropriateness of representation in each local body was collected. The bench noted, "That is the first step that should have been taken."

 

The Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission (MSBCC) was formed in June to undertake the survey, but it has yet to commence. MSBCC wrote a letter to the government in July outlining the survey's manpower, infrastructure, and budgetary requirements, predicting a budget of Rs 435 crore (subject to change).

 

The MVA coalition government passed the ordinance with an eye on the upcoming local body elections on December 21 and between February and December 2022, as OBC communities make up a significant portion of the electorate for all three ruling parties — Shiv Sena, Congress, and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

 

 

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