The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution stating that no panchayat election will be held in the State without reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC). This comes at a time when the nomination process for the first phase of the three-phase panchayat polls has begun. The elections are scheduled to take place on January 6, January 28 and February 16, 2022.
The resolution was proposed by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan amid a din in the House, after the Question Hour session was disrupted by three adjournments following an uproar over the OBC reservation issue.
Leader of the Opposition Kamal Nath later said the resolution had been brought two days after the Congress raised the demand.
On December 17, the Supreme Court had directed the Madhya Pradesh State Election Commission to stay the poll process on seats reserved for OBCs in the local body polls and to re-notify them as general category ones due to a lack of empirical data on OBC backwardness. The apex court’s directive came after Congress leader Manmohan Nagar, president of the Bhopal Zila Panchayat, approached it pleading that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the State had violated the constitutional provisions on reservation rotation and delimitation for panchayat polls.
