LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Tuesday extended the stay on issuing notification for urban local body election till Wednesday.
The bench of Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Saurabh Lavania took the government reply in the local body elections matter on record and placed the matter for next hearing on Wednesday. The bench passed the order on a bunch of PILs led by petitioner Vaibhav Pandey’s petition.
In its reply the state government pleaded that the mechanism adopted by the government for applying OBC quota in the election was as good as that of the triple-test formula suggested by the Supreme Court.
The bench said that it expected that the state government should have said by itself that it would abide by the Supreme Court’s direction, establishing a ‘dedicated commission’ to fix the OBC reservation in the local body elections.
As the state filed its reply, some of the petitioners also placed their rejoinder affidavits in the court. Meanwhile, some more petitions were also filed in the court on the same issue and the court clubbed them all together with Vaibhav Pandey’s plea.
In the counter-affidavit filed by additional chief standing counsel, Amitabh Rai, the state government has stated the state followed the provisions of Municipalities Act 1916 and Municipal Corporation Act 1959 as well as the rulings of the apex court in applying the reservation in the elections.
The state said it had made a mechanism in 2017 for providing the quota in the local body elections providing a Standard Operating Procedure and the same has been followed for this election also.
