In view of the upcoming panchayat elections in the Uttar Pradesh, the state administration will release the reservation list of seats. The list will be released by district magistrates. The list will pave the way for candidates to know from where they are eligible to contest polls.
According to media reports, the final list is cleared after all objections and will be published on Tuesday. The government had earlier set March 15 as the deadline for the list.
The three-tier panchayat polls are scheduled for April. The polls will choose a total of 57,207 heads.
Earlier in February, the Allahabad High Court had asked the Uttar Pradesh Election Commission to hold panchayat elections by April 30 this year as it rejected the poll panel’s undertaking to hold the rural civic body elections by May 2021. The HC had noted that as per the mandate of the Constitution, the election of the panchayat should have been held on or before January 13, 2021.
Notably, following the expiry of the five-year term of Uttar Pradesh gram panchayats and village panchayat head on December 25 last year, the state government had asked the district administration to take over the panchayat administration. Assistant development officers were then appointed and given the charge of the panchayat administrators of all panchayat bodies.
After the HC's order, the Uttar Pradesh government released the reservation policy for the panchayat polls. The government said that reservation by rotation will be implemented in the panchayat elections. The reservation system in place for the elections from 1995 to 2015 will be taken into account in the new policy, Additional Chief Secretary, Panchayati Raj, Manoj Kumar Singh said.
"The order of Scheduled Castes (SC), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and women in the previous election will be taken into account in the reservation policy. Preference would be given to seats which have never been reserved till now," Singh had said.
At present, the state has 826 vikas khands (development blocks), and more than 58,000 gram sabhas. There are 7,31,813 wards in the gram sabhas, and 75,855 wards in kshetra panchayats and 30,051 wards in 75 zila panchayats.
