The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to consider 2015 as the base year while applying reservation rules in the upcoming rural body elections. It also asked the government to wrap up the elections by May 25.

The panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh are expected to be held in April-May.

After releasing the list of reserved seats, the district administration was supposed to correct the objections and re-release the modified list. But, a stay order by the court kept the list from being published till March 15.

The stay order on the reservation process was passed by the Allahabad High Court on March 12 following a petition  by Ajay Kumar who raised questions about the base year being considered in these reservations. The administration was implementing reservations taking 1995 as the base year. The petitioner Kumar contested that the geographic and demographic conditions of the districts had changed since 1995.

Besides asking the government to consider 2015 as the base year, the court also asked the government to submit its reply within 10 days.

In his petition, Kumar cited a government order which acknowledged that the conditions had changed in the 26 years since 1995, and that the reservation should be implemented on the basis of 2014-15. But the administration had not abided by the government order and continued to consider 1995 as the base year in its reservation implementation in the panchayat elections.

A bench composed of Justice Rituraj Awasthi and Justice Manish Mathur also asked for an explanation from the state election commission as well as the government.

Read this report in Hindi