OBC quotas for municipal polls in Bihar illegal: Patna HC

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice S Kumar directed the State Election Commission to hold the polls “only by immediately re-notifying the seats reserved for OBCs, treating them as general categories seats”.

Patna: The Patna High Court on Tuesday ordered that the reservation of seats for Other Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes in urban local body elections was “illegal”. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice S Kumar directed the State Election Commission to hold the polls “only by immediately re-notifying the seats reserved for OBCs, treating them as general categories seats”.

Amit Srivastava, senior advocate, and court-appointed amicus curie said, "There will be no reservation for three categories of seats during the Bihar civic body elections. The elections will be held on these three categories of seats notifying them as general seats. The division bench comprising Chief Justice of Patna high court Sanjay Karol and justice Sanjay Kumar, after hearing all the parties including Sunil Kumar and others, had reserved the decision on September 29, 2022, which was pronounced on Tuesday."

The order, passed on a holiday, throws a spanner in the ongoing election process. The first phase of polls was scheduled on October 10, less than a week from now. In its previous order dated September 29, the court, while reserving its judgement, observed that the elections shall be “subject to the outcome of the present petition” and told the SEC that “should it find prudent to defer the first phase……it shall be open for them to do so”.

The SEC had, accordingly, issued a circular on September 30 to all district magistrates concerned who were asked to keep the contestants in the loop.