Maharashtra SEC announces revised schedule, polling for reserved seats will be held on Dec 21 while that for converted seats on Jan 18, 2022; fate of quota in BMC polls also hangs in balance
Experts said a similar decision is likely for the elections slated early next year as well. Representation pic
The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) has announced a revised poll plan for two zilla parishads and 106 city councils with around 11,000 seats, even before the state government could request the polling authority to postpone the local bodies election so that it could be held with OBC quota instead of converting the seats to general category. If the legal tangle over OBC quota scrapping continues then, experts expect, a similar decision is likely for the elections slated for early next year including polls for municipal corporations as well as other zilla parishad, which is like a mini assembly election.
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As per the revised programme, the polling at the reserved seats will be held on December 21 as scheduled earlier, and OBC seats that have been converted to the general category will have the polling on January 18, 2022. The counting of votes of all seats will be held on January 19.
SEC officials said they hadn’t received a formal request from the government till the announcement was made. The Cabinet had on Wednesday decided to write to SEC to have the existing OBC quota included or postpone the elections. A delegation of BJP leaders met the SEC on Friday to make a similar request.
The decision to hold the polls has been taken in accordance with the Supreme Court’s directive early this week in the cases over OBC quota which the state government contested without success. The SC had struck down the 27 per cent OBC quota, but allowed the state to restore it by collating empirical data for justifying the need and quantum of the quota.
The process is already delayed and going by the government’s submission, it may require some more time to finish up the exercise. If it is delayed further and the quantum of quota does not get a legal sanction before the terms of the BMC and other local self governments, the elections may be held without the quota. The municipal corporations alone have around 500 OBC seats. The decision to postpone these elections will depend on how the matter proceeds further in the government and the courts.
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