Hearing will be held in the Allahabad High Court in the case of urban body elections.

Lucknow. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday granted an interim stay till Tuesday on issuing notification to the State Election Commission (SEC) for conducting urban body elections in the state. The bench also directed the state government not to issue the final notification till Tuesday based on the draft order issued vide notification dated December 5. The bench will continue hearing in this matter on Tuesday as well. This order was passed by the bench of Justice DK Upadhyay and Justice Saurabh Srivastava while hearing the petitions filed separately on behalf of Vaibhav Pandey and other petitioners.

The petitioners have challenged the notification dated December 5, 2022, in which the state had sought objections to fix the reservation by Monday evening. The petitioners have accused the state government of not following the procedure in implementing OBC reservation in the municipal elections. On behalf of the petitioners, it has been said that the Supreme Court, in the judgment given in Suresh Mahajan’s case earlier this year, had clearly ordered that a triple test would be done before issuing reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local body elections and if If the formalities of the triple test cannot be done, then elections will be held declaring all other seats as general seats, except for the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) seats.

The government said – this will delay the conduct of elections
It was alleged that despite the clear guidelines of the apex court, the state government issued a draft notification on December 5, 2022, without a triple test, in which the seats reserved for OBCs were also included. Opposing the petition on behalf of the state government, it was said that it would delay the holding of elections. It was also argued that the notification of December 5 is a draft notification, the petitioner or any person who is dissatisfied with it can file objections.

Interim stay on draft notification
The court was not satisfied with this argument of the state government and put an interim stay on the said draft notification (draft notification) of December 5, 2022 along with the election notification. “Prima facie we find that if the state government intended to follow the procedure laid down by the Supreme Court, the draft notification issued on December 5 would not have included the OBC seats, as OBC seats would have been notified only then,” the bench said. may occur until the triple testing formalities are not completed. Passing the order, the Bench said, ‘It becomes imperative for us to find out whether in the process of reservation of seats for the purpose of elections to the Urban Local Bodies of Uttar Pradesh, the State Government is following the order in Suresh Mahajan’s case. Whether it is or not, therefore we consider this petition and direct the state’s advocate to take complete instructions by Tuesday.