The Hindu : Karnataka News : Focus shifts to quotas for posts in gram panchayats

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 11, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Focus shifts to quotas for posts in gram panchayats

By M. Madan Mohan

HUBLI, MARCH 10. Now that the din and bustle of the elections to more than 5,600 gram panchayats in Karnataka is over, the State is all set to witness a flurry of activities over the determination of reservation of the posts of president and vice-president of gram panchayats for women, the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, the backward classes group A and B, and general category.

Despite parties politicising what was essentially a non-political election, the State Election Commission acted with alacrity in issuing orders on March 3, giving the steps to be taken for determining the reservation of the two posts. Deputy commissioners have begun the exercise, which is expected to be over in about a week.

Controversy

The powers to decide on the reservation of the posts have always been a matter of controversy. The Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act (KPR Act), passed in 1993, gave the powers to the Government. The Opposition parties accused the Government of trying to manipulate the reservation of the posts to favour the ruling party, and in 1997-98, the Act was amended to entrust the responsibility to the State Election Commission. The Government, through a comprehensive amendment to Act in 2003, also entrusted the powers of determining the reservation of seats in zilla and taluk panchayats to the State Election Commission. However, it retains the powers to

determine reservation of the posts of president and vice-president of zilla and taluk panchayats.

Revised guidelines

According to the State Election Commissioner, M.R. Hegde, the commission has issued revised guidelines for determining the reservation with a view to avoiding the problems noticed in the earlier procedure. All along, the procedure was decided at the State level on the basis of the size of the respective categories. This resulted in vacancies in about 90 gram panchayats on account of the non-availability of persons from categories for which seats were reserved. Mr. Hegde told this correspondent that this time, reservation will be made taluk-wise, depending on the size of the reserved categories according to Census 2001.

In the order issued on March 3, the State Election Commission has reserved the posts of president/vice-president in 5,652 gram panchayats as follows, with the number of posts reserved for women in each category in brackets: Scheduled Castes: 1,033 (345); Scheduled Tribes: 470 (157); Backward Class `A' group: 1,507 (502); Backward Class `B' group: 377 (126) and General: 2,265 (755).

The deputy commissioners have been asked to determine the taluk-wise reservations on the basis of the strength of various categories.

It has been laid down that gram panchayats should be identified for the different categories, leaving the rest for the general category.

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