PANAJI
The Goa State Election Commission on Friday skirted the contentious reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and notified reservation of wards for women, Schedules Casts and Scheduled Tribes for the August 10 elections to 185 panchayats.
The SEC notification spells out the scheme for reservation of wards for the three categories, including the ward numbers which are reserved for each of them.
The reservation for women in the SEC notification meets the 33 per-cent Constitutional quota whereas for SCs and STs it follows the population criteria for these communities.
Pertinently, the SEC has not waded into the contentious OBC quota as it has no data to meet the requirements of the 'triple test' mandated by the Supreme Court of India in its recent judgments on the matter in the cases of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
The Pramod Sawant-led government has said raw data has been submitted to the SEC.
However, the State OBC Commission with support from Social Welfare Department and the Directorate of Panchayat will collate the data as per requirements of the Apex Court mandated triple test and submit its report to the SEC within the next 8-10 days, Sawant said.
The SEC can then notify reservation of wards for OBCs, he added.
“The Goa State Election Commission, requested the State Government to provide the data with regards to the OBC in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court. The Commission vide its file dated 16/05/2022 submitted the reservation proposal to the State Government for consultation and for comments if any. The State Government returned the reservation proposals of 186 Village Panchayats to the Commission after completing the consultation process on 26-05-2022. And whereas, the State Government has not provided the data with regards to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court till date,” the Commission said in its notification.
Therefore, the State Election Commission is required to notify the reservation of seats for 186 Village Panchayats without OBC reservation in absence of such OBC data without complying with the triple test formality as prescribed by the Supreme Court.
Analysts meanwhile said the issue of panchayat elections could land in the courts again if resevations for OBCs is skipped altogether.
It is unlikely holding of the panchayat elections without reservations for OBCs will go unchallenged in the courts, they said.
Earlier the Bombay High Court at Goa gave the Goa government 45 days to complete the election process holding that using the monsoons as an excuse to delay the polls was not reason enough to violate the constitutional mandate that local bodies should be elected before the expiry of their terms.
