The Hindu : Front Page : High Court stays polls to Gulbarga Zilla Panchayat

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High Court stays polls to Gulbarga Zilla Panchayat

Special Correspondent

Over 50 per cent quota for women challenged

23 of the 43 seats in the panchayat reserved for women
Court orders issue of notice to State Election Commission

GULBARGA: The Gulbarga Circuit Bench of the Karnataka High Court has stayed elections to the Gulbarga Zilla Panchayat till further hearing on a petition filed by three persons from Aland taluk challenging the reservation of seats for women exceeding 50 per cent of the total number of seats.

The reservation of seats announced for the Jidga and Chinchansur zilla panchayat constituencies has also been challenged.

Interim order

Justice Ram Manohar Reddy, in his interim order on Thursday, admitted the petitions filed by Kalyan Rao, a resident of Chinchansur, Shivappa of Kajuri and Chandrasekhar Patil of Jidga in Aland taluk and stayed the elections and directed issue of notice to the State Election Commission.

However, the court did not stay elections to taluk panchayats in the district.

Advocates Shivakumar Kollur and Nanda Kishore, appearing for the petitioners, said that the reservation of seats for women announced in the notification issued by the State Election Commission exceeded the 50 per cent proposed by the State Government.

Of the 43 seats in the zilla panchayat, 23 have been reserved for women.

The advocates told the court that the State Election Commission had also erred in the reservation of seats in Aland taluk.

Out of the seven zilla panchayat constituencies in Aland taluk, five had been reserved for women: three for the general category, and one each for the Backward Class A and Backward Class B categories.

The judge wanted to know from government pleader P.S. Mali Patil on what basis seats were reserved for women and why men had been placed in a disadvantageous position with less than 50 per cent of the seats.

However, Mr. Patil could not provide any valid reason for the move.

Violation of rules

The advocates for the petitioners also pointed out the violation of rules in the reservation of a particular constituency in the zilla panchayat.

They said that according to the rules, the rotation of reservation in a constituency for a particular caste came once in six terms.

However, in the case of Chinchansur in the Gulbarga Zilla Panchayat, this rule was not followed.

Chinchansur seat

They said that Chinchansur constituency, which was reserved for the Backward Class A category in 1995, was reserved for the Scheduled Castes category (woman) in 2000. In the 2005 elections, the constituency was again reserved for the Backward Class A category.

In the notification issued for the elections now, the State Election Commission had reserved the seat for the Scheduled Castes (woman).

Similarly, Jidga constituency in Aland taluk had not been reserved even once for the general category, the advocates told the court.

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