The Supreme Court on Tuesday mandated the states to follow the triple test it laid down last year for the reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBC) in local bodies. The test involves the appointment of panels, gathering empirical data quantifying the extent and backwardness local body-wise, and ensuring the quota does not exceed the 50% ceiling.
The order came in response to a petition over 23,000 unfilled panchayat seats in Madhya Pradesh. The seats remained vacant as the state could not fulfil the test. In December, the court directed the State Election Commission to re-notify OBC seats in local bodies as general seats and conduct elections. This prompted the state to legislate to take over the function of delimitation from the poll watchdog.
A bench of justices AM Khanwilkar, AS Oka, and CT Ravikumar took serious exception over the vacant 321 urban bodies and about 23,260 panchayat seats. It said such conduct is “bordering on the breakdown of the rule of law”.
The court directed the poll watchdog to notify the elections within two weeks. It made it clear that neither delimitation nor triple test compliance can delay the filling up of the vacant seats. The court said the seats must be represented by elected representatives after every five years as per the constitutional requirement.
The bench said the triple test formula laid down in a judgment in March last year will apply to elections to all local bodies across the country and is binding on all states and election commissions.
The Madhya Pradesh election watchdog informed the court that most of the unfilled seats were due to be filled for nearly two years.
The court last week reserved its order in the matter saying it is an “absurd and preposterous situation not only in this state but in others also.” It said the delay cannot be permitted when the constitutional scheme requires seats to be filled within six months of them falling vacant.
The court earlier passed similar orders with respect to Maharashtra, where the triple test was applied to local bodies’ polls. Maharashtra also resisted filling up OBC seats at the panchayat samiti and the zila parishad levels till it met the triple test.
This triple test requires states to set up commissions to collect empirical data quantifying the extent and backwardness of OBCs. This is to be followed by the determination of the quantum of the reservation to be applied in each local body area, before ensuring that the reservation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and OBCs combined in a local body seat does not exceed the 50% ceiling.
The Madhya Pradesh government constituted a three-member commission to examine the extent of backwardness of OBCs in the state and to quantify the reservation applicable to them. But the court said the commission had to also demarcate the OBC seats based on its recommendation and only then the triple test will be deemed to have been complied. It said the exercise had to be done local bodies-wise.
The commission quantified the OBC population to be 48% and recommended a quota of 35% at the panchayat level.