So when the High Court of Bombay at Goa quashed and set aside the reservations to five municipal councils and directed that the reservations be notified again, it was history in the making. The court was setting a precedent that other courts across the country can now refer to. That the High Court felt the need to do so indicates that there was something majorly wrong with the reservation process that has been released by the Directorate of Municipal Administration.
The reservations had attracted objections hours after they had been declared. The State Election Commission had even submitted to the High Court that they did not meet the Constitution mandates where reservation for women was concerned. On a query whether it would ask the government to correct the discrepancy, GSEC had submitted that it cannot ask the government to rectify the discrepancies as this was the prerogative of the State government. It was clear after this submission of the GSEC that the poll process was flawed and that the petitions that had been filed had a legal point. Besides, the HC had also questioned the election commission on the haste in announcing the election programme when there were petitions pending before it
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
Three questions arise from this: Why did the Directorate of Municipalities clear the reservations when they were erroneously done? Was it deliberate? Why didn’t the government at that time itself withdraw and rectify the errors in the reservations?
Had the government acted, it would not face the embarrassment of having the poll process for five municipal councils halted and stinging observations regarding the conduct of the Director of Municipal Administration and the State Election Commissioner. While the High Court has observed that the former ‘after having admitted that there was no policy based on which the reservation has been made or rotation policy implemented, appears to have regarded the absence of such policy as a license to make reservations based on his whims and caprices’, the ‘Law Secretary, who is holding the post of SEC, issued the election schedule on February 22, 2021 even though, these petitions had already been instituted and were posted for final disposal on February 22, 2021’.
Who will assume responsibility for this mess, for it can hardly be termed a blunder? Will it be the Director of Urban Development/Municipal Administration that the court has passed strictures against? Or will it be somebody in the government who will own up? It cannot be overlooked that even before this order of the High Court, there had already been some quibbling among the ruling party MLAs, where Vasco legislator Carlos Almeida has squarely blamed the Urban Development Minister Milind Naik for deliberately manipulating the ward reservations. Almeida had gone on to suggest that Naik be dropped from the cabinet. In this political game, will a bureaucrat be the scapegoat?
Much as the State government had desired to have elections to the municipal councils, the Corporation of the City of Panaji and by-elections to various panchayat wards and the lone Zilla Panchayat constituency simultaneously, so that there is no extended period of a code of conduct, this will now not be possible. The elections will now be held in two phases – the first in the municipalities where the High Court has not paused the process and the second where the court has directed an amended ward reservations notification that meets the Constitution mandate. This could have been entirely avoidable had the ward reservation notification not been erroneous or had the government reacted immediately when the errors had been pointed out by the people.
