With respect to first test that is, having a dedicated Commission to conduct an empirical inquiry into the nature and implication of backwardness in relation to local bodies, the High Court observed that the same was not done.
“It is not the pleaded case of the State that the Government had ever entrusted any work to this Commission, undertaking the task of conducting an empirical inquiry into the nature and implication of political backwardness of the EBC, much less of OBC category for the purpose of the reservation to the election of municipalities, as mandated by K. Krishna Murthy or Vikas Kishanrao Gawali,” the Court said.
Hence, the act of providing reservation was vitiated by jurisdictional error since the requirement to establish a dedicated commission to gather empirical data was not complied with, the bench ruled.
“We find the impugned actions to suffer from the vice of lack of jurisdictional error since imperativeness of the need to establish a dedicated Commission or empowering the existing bodies to undertake the task of empirical data collection and study thereof not to have been carried out,” the judgment said.
Source: Barandbench
