Won’t let local bodies’ polls take place until OBC quota issue resolved, says Maharashtra social welfare minister

The minister’s statement came two days after he said that a review petition will be filed in the Supreme Court on its verdict to quash the reservation for Other Backward Class (OBC) category in local bodies’ polls.

Maharashtra Minister Vijay Wadettiwar (File)

Maharashtra Social Welfare Minister Vijay Wadettiwar on Monday urged Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to postpone all local self-government body polls due in the next few months in the state unless the issue of OBC reservation is resolved.

The minister’s statement came two days after he said that a review petition will be filed in the Supreme Court on its verdict to quash the reservation for Other Backward Class (OBC) category in local bodies’ polls.

He said if the polls were not postponed, the OBC leaders in the state would “not allow them to take place”.
The elections to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) are due in February next year.

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“The state government should not allow the local self government body polls to be held till the issue of OBC reservation is decided (upon). NCP Minister Chhagan Bhujbal and I have met CM Uddhav Thackeray in this connection and urged him to postpone the polls…,” Wadettiwar said.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader said he would urge the SC to direct the Central government to provide the required empirical data to the state government so that it could be placed before the apex court.

Wadettiwar said Thackeray was “positive” about postponing the polls and expressed hope that a decision in the regard will be announced soon. “If the polls are not postponed, we (OBC leaders in state) will not allow them to take place,” he warned the government.

On Sunday, another OBC leader, Pankaja Munde of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had announced that her party will hold statewide ‘chakka jam’ agitation to press for the demand.

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OBC leaders from across the state are also slated to meet in Lonavala on June 26 and 27 to deliberate on the steps that need to be taken to get political reservations for the OBCs.

On March 4 this year, the Supreme Court had read down Section 12(2) (c) of The Maharashtra Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis Act, 1961 as an enabling provision, stating that it may be invoked only upon complying with the “triple conditions” before notifying the seats reserved for OBC category in the local bodies concerned.

The conditions included setting up a dedicated Commission to conduct “contemporaneous rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness qua local bodies, within the State”. The court stated that such reservation, in any case, should not exceed the aggregate of 50 per cent of the total seats reserved in favour of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and OBC categories.

Officials from the State Election Commission said that following the apex court order, all the OBC seats of the local bodies, which were conditional to the outcome of the SC petitions, have been vacated and converted into open category.

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Earlier, poll panel secretary Kiran Kurundkar, had told this paper: “The SC judgment is applicable to the elections of all local bodies — rural and urban. The election commission will consult with the state government whenever the local bodies’ polls are held and will decide on the OBC reservation as per the SC order.”

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Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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