Uttar Pradesh government to challenge High Court decision on urban civic polls in Supreme Court

The Uttar Pradesh government will challenge the Allahabad High Court's order regarding holding of urban local body polls at the earliest in the Supreme Court.

"As the government is determined to give quota benefits to the OBCs in the urban local body polls, the government has decided to move the Supreme Court against the HC decision to exclude the backward reservations from these polls in the state," said a state government spokesman.

He further said, "Previous governments have already conducted urban local body and panchayat polls on the basis of the same rapid survey adopted by this government."

Read | No OBC quota in urban local body polls in UP, rules Allahabad HC

It is now unlikely that the elections will be held anytime soon although the High Court has directed that the polls should be held by January 31, 2023.

The next course of action is going to be charted out by the legal team and urban development department officials.

As the next step, the state government would establish a dedicated commission for ascertaining the political backwardness of the OBCs in various wards and localities within the 762 urban local bodies.

Senior officials of the urban development department revealed that the existing commission for OBCs in the state does not have the authority to collect or offer data or report on the political backwardness of the OBCs in the state.

"The mandate of the existing commission is to ensure no rights of the OBC individuals are denied while offering them reservation in government jobs, educational institutes, in schemes floated by government departments and other such matters," said an official.

"A new commission to collect empirical data on the political backwardness could be set up at a short notice, but collecting the data from 762 towns in UP, assessing it and making recommendation would be possible only after an exhaustive exercise which could take several weeks in a large state such as UP," the official added.

Meanwhile, the legal team of the state has already started reaching out to their counterparts in Maharashtra where a dedicated commission to collect empirical data of OBC caste families had been set up in March to fulfil the triple test formula.

Once the data (as per the mandate under triple test) is ready in Uttar Pradesh, the department will announce the reservation for the positions of mayor and chairpersons once again.