PANAJI: The High Court of Bombay at Goa has stayed delimitation and reservations of few wards in 10 village panchayats.
It may be noted that several petitioners had approached the High Court challenging the notification of delimitation and reservations of 15 wards of 10 village panchayats.
The petitioners have challenged the notification on the ground that due to these delimitation and reservations, their rights to contest elections from their desired panchayats have been violated.
The High Court on one of the petitions observed that an advocate for the petitioner invited my attention to the impugned notification dated May 16, 2017 on the basis of which three wards were reserved for OBC from the 11 seats with no justifiable reason for such reservation. He had also pointed out to the notification dated April 16, 2012 in respect of the same village panchayat where only one seat was reserved for OBC based on the census of 2011 and urged that there was no basis to reserve three wards for OBC with a total population of 1339 as against the total population of 16,625 persons in the said area based on the census and data issued by the BDO, Ponda.
The High Court further observed that Section 20(1) (d)(iv) of the Act would not provide any remedy to the petitioner since declaring an election to be void would not sub-serve the purpose of offering challenge to the reservation of the wards for OBC and in any event would prove counterproductive to the action contemplated on behalf of the petitioner. The impugned notification therefore is prima facie based on a non-application of mind and depriving the petitioner of the valuable right to contest the election. I therefore deem it appropriate in the circumstances to stay the impugned notification dated May16, 2017.
It may be noted that petitioner Rozer Afonso has challenged the notification reserving ward numbers 3, 5 and 7 of village panchayat of Betalbatim for Other Backward Class and petitioner Ramakant Borkar has challenged the notification changing number of wards from 6 to 5 of Sancoale village panchayat and reserving the ward number 6 for women while petitioner Vinayak Sawant challenged the notification reserving ward number 5 of village panchayat of Advalpal for Backward Class.
Whereas petitioner Umesh Anant Phadte has challenged the notification changing the composition of ward number 9 to ward number 8 of village panchayat of Penha de Franca and reserving it for women, and petitioner Vrunda Dinesh Patil has challenged the notification changing the scheme of reservation of ward numbers 2 and 3 of village panchayat of Anjuna.
The petitioner Vandita Volvoikar has challenged the notification reserving of ward number 1 of village panchayat of Curca, Bambolim for Schedule Tribes.
The petitioner Naveed Noor Tahsildar has challenged the notification reserving ward number 6 of village panchayat of Curti, Khandepar for OBC and the petitioner Pratap Haldankar has challenged the notification reserving ward number 6 of village panchayat of Betki, Khandola for Backward Class.
Petitioner Riddhesh Sukhtankar has challenged the notification reserving ward number 7 of village panchayat of Betki, Khandola for Backward Class and petitioner Venacia Gonsalves has challenged the notification reserving ward number 6 of village panchayat of Merces for Backward Class.