After finalisation of electoral rolls for the forthcoming civic elections, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Friday conducted the lottery to decide the reservation of seats for the civic body polls while including reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.
Earlier, the PMC had completed the process of reservation of seats for the civic elections but had not reserved seats for OBC as the Supreme Court had withdrawn reservation for the category in the civic elections. Recently, however, the apex court reinstated the OBC reservation for civic polls and set a condition that it should not be more than 50% of the total seats.
Following this, the PMC had to once again undertake the process of reservation of seats for the civic elections. On Friday, it decided that 46 seats will be reserved for OBCs in the PMC elections. These were in addition to the 23 seats reserved for Scheduled Caste (SC) category and two seats for Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. Of the total 173 seats, each category (SC, ST, OBC and general) will have 50% seats reserved for women candidates.
The PMC would seek suggestions and objections on the reservation of seats and hold a public hearing on August 2 before issuing a notification for the same.
The administrative process before the civic elections is complete and the next phase would be holding the elections. The PMC has also started the process of deputing 35,000 civic staff for holding the polls in 4,000 centres and for counting of votes.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/maharashtra-local-body-elections-sc-warns-sec-of-contempt-obc-quota-8057782/lite/
On July 20, the top court, while accepting the recommendations of the Banthia Commission providing 27% OBC reservation in local bodies, directed that election to local bodies in the state be notified in the next two weeks. The court, however, made it clear that the new reservation policy will not apply to the 367 local bodies where the election process had already been set in motion.
On Thursday, it pulled up the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) and warned it of action for contempt of court if it re-notifies elections to 367 local bodies taking the cover of the top court’s July 20 order allowing reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the local body polls. However, the SEC is yet to notify elections to the PMC and, hence, reservation can be made for the OBC category in the civic elections.