By Arun Pratap Singh
Garhwal Post Bureau
Dehradun, 8 Jun: In a significant development amidst mounting constitutional concerns, the Uttarakhand Cabinet sub-committee constituted to examine the issue of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Panchayat elections has finalised its recommendations. The sub-committee is expected to submit its report to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami tomorrow, paving the way for the state Cabinet to take a final call during its scheduled meeting on 11 June.
The state is under increasing pressure from the High Court to hold the overdue three-tier Panchayat elections without further delay. The elections, which are pending in 12 districts of the state excluding Haridwar, have been delayed beyond the extended tenure of the elected Panchayati Raj bodies, prompting concerns of a constitutional vacuum at the grassroots level. The situation has been compounded by the pending resolution of the OBC reservation formula, which had emerged as a key legal and political roadblock.
In response, the state government had earlier constituted a single-member dedicated commission to assess the extent of OBC representation in rural local bodies. The commission had submitted its report to the government, which in turn referred the matter to a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Forest Minister Subodh Uniyal. Sources confirm that the sub-committee has now concluded its deliberations and taken a final decision based on the commission’s findings.
Currently, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes enjoy a combined reservation of 22 percent in Panchayati Raj institutions in Uttarakhand. As per constitutional provisions and Supreme Court guidelines, total reservation in any election cannot exceed 50 percent. This effectively limits the quota for OBCs to a maximum of 28 percent in the state’s rural local bodies. However, it needs to be reminded here that, in the hills, the percentage of OBC population is not high and therefore even the provision of 28 percent reservation for the OBC in the hills may strongly be resented and objected to by the people.
The sources indicate that the sub-committee has evaluated various formulae to determine the appropriate share for OBCs at different levels of the Panchayat system. One such approach includes determining reservation for District Panchayat Presidents based on the OBC population as per the 2011 Census at the state level. For District Panchayat Members and Block Pramukhs, district-level OBC population data may be used, while for BDC members and Gram Panchayat representatives, block-level data might form the basis for reservation allocation. As there has been no census after 2011, the figures used are expected to be derived from that year’s population data.
Although Panchayat elections in Haridwar continue to be conducted separately, elections in the remaining 12 districts have not yet been held despite the expiry of the term of the previous Panchayats. The state government had earlier extended the tenure of these bodies by six months, but no polls were held even after this period lapsed. With the High Court taking a strict stand, and public interest mounting, the delay has led to a kind of a constitutional crisis as per the legal experts.
Once the sub-committee’s report is formally submitted to the CM, a final Cabinet decision is expected to follow swiftly. The sources anticipate that the Cabinet meeting on 11 June will most likely give the green signal to the new reservation formula, clearing the decks for the long-delayed Panchayat elections. In that condition, there is a strong likelihood of the Panchayat elections being held within the next one and a half months.
