The High Court of Punjab and Haryana, Chandigarh, registered a total of thirteen petitions on the legislation of the reservation criteria in the Haryana Panchayat elections 2022. In this regard, the court had ordered the petitioners to submit a reply against the statement of the government of Haryana, that declared the government’s readiness to conduct panchayat elections in the state.
The petitioners, however, failed to submit a reply to the court, owing to which certain developments have now come into force. As per the high court of the state, the matter has now been adjourned and will now be heard on a later date. In this case, the Haryana government had already declared that it is ready to hold elections, ergo the High Court should allow it.
The Haryana government has said in the application filed that the tenure of panchayats has ended on February 23 last year itself. Some of the provisions of the Second Amendment of the Panchayati Raj Act have been challenged by filing 13 petitions in the High Court.
The government added that earlier, due to the havoc of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had assured the High Court not to hold this election. Now the situation has improved, despite this, the government has not issued any notification regarding the elections.
The petitioners has demanded from the High Court to quash the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Second Amendment) Act 2020 notified by the State Panchayat Department on April 15, calling it discriminatory and unconstitutional. The High Court has been told that under the notification made under this amendment, eight percent of seats in Panchayati Raj have been reserved for the BC-A category and it has been decided that the minimum number of seats should not be less than two.
According to the petitioners, these two are contrary to each other, as there are only six districts in Haryana with eight percent, where two seats stand out for reservation. Otherwise, only one seat is to be reserved in 18 districts, whereas the government has reserved two seats for the BC-A category in all districts through a notification dated April 15, which is legally wrong.
