Centralised system likely for reserving panchayats
LUCKNOW: This time the government may make some changes in the current rules that are applied to carry out the exercise to reserve posts for the three-tier panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh, sources dealing with the issue revealed.
The rural polls in UP are expected in March-April and the prospective candidates are waiting for reservation and categorization of their village panchayat with baited breath to announce their candidature accordingly or just sit back home if they become ineligible to contest due to the ‘unsuitable’ category their village is put into.
The panchayati raj department has proposed a centralized system for carrying out the reservation exercise with regard to the village panchayats. Under the system followed till now, the department made all the data available to the district magistrates and they reserved the posts of pradhan for ST/SC/OBC/ women or put them into the unreserved category as per the formula they fitted into.
“This time the entire exercise is proposed to be conducted at the level of the directorate of panchayati raj with a view to having check on possible manipulations,” sources said.
The reservation of seats for zila panchayat and kshetra panchayat chairpersons and members was already done at the directorate level and no change in this system is proposed.
The panchayati raj department, according sources, sent a proposal in this regard to the government on Tuesday evening.
When contacted, panchayati raj minister Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary admitted to some changes being discussed though he did not reveal further. “We expect to finalise the reservation policy by January 22 and complete the reservation of panchayats by mid-February,” he said. Sources said formation of hundreds of new village panchayats following the delimitation was delaying finalization of the reservation policy.
“There are around 1,000 new village panchayats that have come into existence after delimitation. Now, the government is not able to decide whether to treat them as old or new for the purpose of reservation.”
“There are two options before us. We may either apply the rotation formula for new panchayats as well or categorize them on the basis of strength of population treating them as new,” an official said. “The rotation is done in such a way that a village panchayat is reserved for the category for which it was never reserved while also taking strength of population into account at the same time,” sources said, adding “Not less than 1/3 of the total posts under a block are reserved for women.”