Bijnor, 29 December: The Uttar Pradesh government set up a panel on quotas for OBCs in urban local body elections, and its chairman, Justice (retd) Ram Avtar Singh on Thursday, said it will take six months to compile a reservation draft using the Supreme Court’s “triple test” criteria. “The triple test process for the reservation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) shall be conducted in accordance with Supreme Court rules on the mandated protocol. This procedure will take roughly six months to complete,” according to Justice (Retd) Singh, who spoke to media today.
The Uttar Pradesh government constituted the five-member committee on Wednesday, a day after the Allahabad High Court ruled that its draft poll notice was invalid.
The ‘triple test’ formula calls for the establishment of a commission to conduct a ‘rigorous empirical inquiry’ into the nature of ‘backwardness’ in the context of local bodies, specifying the proportion of reservation based on the commission’s recommendations, and not exceeding the overall quota limit of 50%.
Justice (retd) Singh is a judicial officer from the 1976 batch. In 1991, he was elevated to the Higher Judicial Service. He joined the Allahabad High Court in 2009 and retired in 2011.
The panel’s other four members include retired Indian Administrative Service officers Chaub Singh Verma and Mahendra Kumar, as well as former state legal advisers Santosh Kumar Viskarma and Brajesh Kumar Soni.
According to a notification on the panel’s constitution released by the Urban Development department, the commission’s tenure will be six months from the day it takes control. The panel’s establishment comes a day after the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench rejected the state government’s draft notice on urban local body elections and ordered the polls to be held without reservation for OBCs.
