Lucknow, 16 March: Sources attached to the government say that senior officials have been engaged in brainstorming since yesterday on the orders of the High Court over Panchayat polls to be across the state, by late evening or Wednesday, a new Government Order (GO) in this regard is expected to be issued.
Sources said that Manoj Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary, Panchayat Raj Department and Kinjal Singh, Director of Directorate of Panchayat Raj have held several meetings with the advocates and legal counsel so far on the orders of the High Court.
Sources also say that the draft of the new GO is almost ready and it will be released by late evening or Wednesday and will be sent to all the district collectors of the state.
Significantly, the process of reservation for the three-tier panchayat elections across the state was stopped by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday.
The court has ordered reservation of seats on the base of the year 2015. A division bench of Justice Rituraj Awasthi and Justice Manish Mathur has also ordered that the Panchayat elections be held by May 25 by issuing a revised reservation list by March 27.
For the three-tier panchayats in the state, 75 district panchayat presidents, 826 block heads, 58,194 village heads, ward members of 3051 district panchayats, ward members of 75855 blocks and ward members of 7,31,813 gram panchayats are to be elected.
For this, the process of reservation was underway throughout the state. Objections were raised till March 8 after the provisional reservation allocation for all posts.
After this, the final lists of reservation allocation were to be published in the districts by March 17, by disposing of objections from March 13-14.
Meanwhile, the entire process was postponed until further orders due to the March 12 order of the High Court. After this, on Monday, the court has ordered the entire reservation process to be done on the basis of the year 2015.
With this order of the High Court, the Panchayat elections in the state will now be completed with delay. The reservation was first determined in rotation in 1995 as the base year, but now the High Court has ordered the release of the reservation considering the 2015 election as the base year.
Experts say that due to the new order, the reservation of the posts fixed till now for the posts of District Panchayat President and Member, Block Head and Kshetra Panchayat (BDC) and Gram Pradhan and Gram Panchayat Member will be affected.
