Minutes after the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Madhya Pradesh to hold local body elections with reservations for other backward classes (OBC), Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan launched a blistering attack on the Congress which he said, had conspired to block OBC quotas and now stood exposed.
“Congress leaders and Kamal Nath (state Congress president) hatched a conspiracy to create trouble for common people and blamed BJP for failing to provide OBC reservation. But, now they are exposed,” Chouhan said after the top court’s order in Delhi.
“After the Supreme Court’s judgement on holding election without reservation, Congress leaders were saying that nothing will happen. But we fought because we resolved that the election to local bodies and panchayats will not be held without OBC reservation,” Chouhan said.
The Supreme Court earlier declined to allow the state to hold local body elections with 27% reservation for OBCs without empirical data on the population and representation of OBCs.
MP’s OBC commission put the population of OBCs in the state at 48% and permitted reservation of varying quantum across each municipal seat, extending to a maximum of 35%. Once this exercise was complete within a week, the court directed the MP state poll body to notify the election for nearly 23,263 local body posts which are vacant.
To be sure, the court clarified that it was yet to decide on the merits of the commission’s report. But the verdict is a huge political victory for Chouhan, especially since Maharashtra, which is ruled by a coalition of Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, also tried to convince the top court but did not succeed.
A bench of justices AM Khanwilkar, AS Oka and CT Ravikumar allowed the Madhya Pradesh government to issue the order notifying OBC seats in line with the report of the three-member OBC commission set up in September last year.
