Summary:
Patna, Oct 5 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) on Wednesday asserted that fresh municipal polls will now be held in the state only after reservations for Other Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes, set aside by the Patna High Court, were restored.
JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan and parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha made the averment at a joint press conference here, a day after the court declared the quotas “illegal” and directed the State Election Commission to hold the urban local body polls only after all the reserved seats were “re notified” as those of general category.
The SEC, on its part, has deferred the polls, scheduled in two phases on October 10 and October 20, saying that fresh dates will be announced in due course.
“There is no illegality in the quotas.
These were introduced by the Nitish Kumar government for panchayats in 2006 and for urban local bodies a year later.
We suspect the BJP’s hand in the goof up.
The party and its parent body RSS have always been opposed to quotas,” the JD(U) leaders alleged.
“If we check the backgrounds of the petitioners who had challenged reservations in urban local bodies, their links with the BJP will come to the fore.
Many BJP leaders had privately celebrated the high court order.
It can be verified,” they claimed.
The saffron party had been JD(U)’s ally till 2013 when Kumar broke up following differences over the elevation of Narendra Modi as prime ministerial candidate.
The two parties realigned in 2017, fought the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 and assembly elections a year later together, and ran a coalition government till August this year, when Kumar again dumped the BJP following accusations of attempts to break the JD(U).
The BJP, on its part, has been squarely blaming Kumar for the legal wrangle, alleging that his government did not complete formalities like setting up an independent commission for recommending quotas for electoral purposes.
The saffron party has also been raking up the era of Karpoori Thakur, the mentor of Kumar and RJD president Lalu Prasad, claiming that its forerunner Bharatiya Jana Sangh had always supported the late socialist leader’s social justice measures while the Congress, which is a part of the ruling ‘Mahagathbandhan’, was opposed to the same.
However, the JD(U) leaders maintained “there was simply no need for a commission in Bihar.