Animated image of Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has given a leg up to people’s representation at the grassroots – normally called the local self-government bodies, from panchayats to huge municipal corporations – by asking the Maharashtra state election commission to hold elections to them. It asked if there was any logic in allowing bureaucrats to take policy decisions by being the administrators sans elected members. All this is due to litigation on what proportion of these bodies should be occupied by OBCs.
The court asked on Tuesday the Maharashtra’s state election office to notify elections within four weeks of the apex court’s order. The polls have been due from April 2020 to December 2023. Whenever the polls in due course were scheduled, an administrator was appointed so that the court could tell the government if 19 per cent or 27 per cent of the seats should be occupied by the OBCs. The first to be brought under the control of administrators was Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation.
As per rules, the administrators can be placed to run the self-government bodies only for six months and the government has been issuing orders for another six months several times to each of the administrators; many of them were replaced by other officers because of transfers. It was all because of the political demand that OBCs get more seats than they had. In Maharashtra reservations is a sensitive issue which no political party wants to sidestep.
The question of the proportions is yet to be settled, and the state government wanted the apex court’s decision on the contentious issue of the proportion. This matter has been pending since 2022 because all politicians including the government wanted to raise the quota but which among the castes or sub-castes was to be an OBC. This has not been unraveled yet. The state appointed a commission, and its findings militate against the cap of 50 per cent reservations for all sections together – SCs and STs included.
The wheels of the democratic cart have been now oiled by the three-member bench which now brings elections to 687 of the 780 local bodies in sight, including all the 29 municipal corporations. The 248 municipal councils, 42 of the 147 nagar panchayats, 32 of the 34 zilla parishads, 336 of the 351 panchayat samithis will get elected representatives. Since the court’s order, however, is interim and what it decides on the 19 per cent vs. 27 per cent will affect the reservations in the next round of elections.
All this is jolly good, but we need to look at what happened without elections and what could happen after the polls to these bodies. The administrators have a dual role in the absence of the elected body. These bodies have an elected body and an officer who executes their wishes. Technically, a municipal corporation’s elected body is only advisory. For instance, the commissioner presents a budget and allocations. But outside of them, it is the corporator who builds a relationship with the officials and gets things done in the ward which elected him.
But these past years have seen the official, normally an IAS officer, as the administrator for corporations and others for the lower bodies, performing both roles. They present the budget and approve it as well. The elected representatives who hoped to get reelected if re-nominated by their political parties have been hanging on to get back into their roles. That includes providing patronage to citizens, contractors, and influencing official action on issues that plague the area: bad roads, water supply, garbage collection et al.
At the core of it, however, is the principle of getting democracy alive again with all its flaws in its practice. The people with civic problems find it easier to find and approach their elected representatives than approach the officials. Approaching the official at any level is quite a daunting task especially because they are generally insular, unavailable. The elected person has his or her office where a person can walk in, get heard and even get a resolution of the issue with which a corporator of a Zilla Parishad member plays a critical role.
Though the apex court has set the schedule for notification within four weeks, there are overwhelming tasks of electoral lists, the vagaries of weather in about six weeks the state would, as normally is the case, would find monsoon and places like Mumbai, despite the expenditure and claims of flood-proofing, are inundated. How would the voter get to the booth? How would a candidate campaign to seek votes in what is usually an expensive exercise even if the constituencies are smaller than an Assembly’s.
These bodies are stepping stones for higher rungs in public affairs or the business of politics. Each politician – there are no city fathers anymore – likes to grow from the sarpanch’s status to being a minister in the state and right up to the Centre. This cannot be belittled because no person can be denied their ambitions, that being after all, the motivation. Often public causes and purposes may take a side seat, and other urges can upend the purpose for which one is elected by the people.
This post was last modified on May 7, 2025 9:25 pm