The Uttarakhand High Court on Friday vacated the stay on panchayat elections in the state.
The high court, however, asked the state government to reply to the allegations of irregularities made against it in finalising the reservation roster for the rural bodies’ elections within three weeks.
Hearing a group of Public Interest Litigations (PILs) alleging irregularities in finalising reservation roster by the state government, a division bench of Chief Justice G Narendra and Justice Alok Mahar asked the State Election Commission (SEC) to release a new poll schedule for three tier panchayat bodies in the state.
As per earlier schedule, polling was to be held in two phases on July 10 and july 15.
At the same time, the high court directed the Pushkar Singh Dhami government to reply to allegations made against it on irregularities in finalising the reservation roster within three weeks. It’s noteworthy that the high court had stayed the panchayat election scheduled by SEC on June 23 while hearing PILs alleging that the state government did not follow norms in finalising reservation roster for the panchayat bodies.
Petitioners had charged the government with failing to follow the procedure for mandatory gazette notification of the roster before SEC announced poll schedule.
However, a day after the high court granted the stay, the Dhami government, on June 24, came up with the notification of the rural bodies poll reservation plan and submitted the same in the court. The government, at the same time, pleaded for vacating the stay. After three consecutive days of hearing, the petitioners had sought time from the court to go through the government’s reservation roster. Going ahead with the hearing on June 27, the court directed the SEC to prepare a new panchayat poll schedule.
Meanwhile, the petitioners challenged the reservation plan of the panchayat elections as submitted by the state government. The PILs raised serious questions on awarding reservation of seats for block heads and district panchayat chairman.
They alleged that a large number of the both tier seats were kept as these were in the past violating constitutional norms for rotation of reservation plans.
The PILs claimed that most of the reserved seats were allocated to the same castes that were already there for a long time. According to the petitioners, it’s a violation of Article 243 of the Constitution and Supreme Court orders passed from time to time.