LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court on Thursday issued a directive to the Uttar Pradesh government to bring the report of the UP state local bodies dedicated backward classes commission providing OBC quota for conducting the upcoming local body elections into the public domain by uploading it on its website. The report should be uploaded within four days so that all could have access to it, the court said.
The division bench, comprising Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Manish Kumar, passed the order on the writ petition moved by Vikas Agrawal, a resident of Lakhimpur Kheri.
The petitioner had stated that for holding local body elections, the commission submitted a report on March 30, fixing OBC reservation for different seats across the state.
The petitioner further stated that time for filing an objection had been given till April 6 but the copy of the report was not available in the public domain and hence he was not in a position to submit his objection to the reservation made on the Nighasan nagar panchayat seat.
Hearing the plea a day before, the bench had sought the report on Thursday. After perusal, the bench returned it to the state counsel. The bench ordered the government to upload the report on the website, the details of which were provided to it by additional advocate general (AAG) KP Tripathi.
Earlier, the AAG said that although there was no requirement in law for providing the said report yet if this court ordered so, it would be uploaded on the official website of the urban development department within the stipulated time. The details of the website had been provided by the AAG to the petitioner’s lawyer Gaurav Mehrotra.
During the hearing, the state counsel also provided the copy of the notification issued on March 31, containing the list of politically backward classes to Mehrotra. The state counsel also told the bench that the petitioner did not fall in the OBC category.