The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday told the Allahabad High Court that it is complying with the 'triple test' formula suggested by the Supreme Court to provide OBC reservation in urban local body (ULB) elections.
After hearing the arguments of the state government and the petitioners on the matter related to the OBC quota in ULB polls, the Lucknow bench of the high court placed the case for next hearing on Wednesday and also extended the stay on issuing notification for elections till then. A bench of Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Saurabh Lavania passed the order on a bunch of pleas led by Vaibhav Pandey's PIL.
On the government's argument, the bench said, "We are in disagreement that the state's mechanism is as good as the triple test formula. “We thought that better senses would prevail on the state,” commented the bench, expecting that the state government should have said by itself that it would abide by the Supreme Court direction, establishing a "dedicated commission" to fix the OBC reservation in the ULB elections.
The triple test formula, laid down by the Supreme Court, requires the states to appoint a commission, collect quantifiable data of the community, and allocate reservation to them in local bodies in such a manner that the total reservation in each seat does not exceed 50 per cent. As the state filed its reply, some of the petitioners also placed their rejoinder affidavits in the court. Meanwhile, some more petitions were also filed in the court on the same issue and the court clubbed them all with Vaibhav Pandey's plea.
In the counter affidavit filed by additional chief standing counsel Amitabh Rai, the state government has stated the state followed the provisions of Municipalities Act 1916 and Municipal Corporation Act 1959 as well as the rulings of the apex court in applying the reservation in the elections. The state said it had made a mechanism in 2017 for providing the quota in the local body elections providing a standard operating procedure and the same has been followed for this election also.
