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    High Court stays UP’s move to shift 17 OBCs to SC list

    Synopsis

    The state government has been asked to file a reply within three weeks.

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    Representative image
    NEW DELHI: The Allahabad High Court put on hold the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to shift 17 Other Backward Castes (OBCs) to the Scheduled Castes (SC) list, saying the state did not have the power to do so, dealing a blow to the ruling BJP ahead of the bypolls to 13 assembly constituencies.

    The court asked the state government to file a reply within three weeks.

    The Yogi Adityanath government had issued the notification on June 24 after the Lok Sabha results, shifting 17 castes in the OBC list to the SC list. The opposition parties in UP and even the BJP government at the Centre had termed the move unauthorised, with Union minister TC Gehlot saying the UP government should have instead sent a proposal to the Centre.

    On Monday, the high court said only Parliament had the power to pass a law to this effect, stayed the notification of the UP government and sought a reply from the principal secretary of the state’s social welfare department within three weeks. “The UP government had simply usurped Parliament’s power. It was an illegal order,” Advocate Rakesh Gupta, counsel for petitioner Gorakh Prasad, told ET.

    The UP government did not withdraw its notification even after Gehlot termed it “unconstitutional” on the floor of the Rajya Sabha on July 2.

    The Nishad Party, which shifted loyalties to the BJP from the Samajwadi Party during the Lok Sabha election, has been long pressing for the Nishad community to be shifted to the SC list from the OBC list. The 17 castes that benefited from the June 24 order include the Nishads, Mallah, Rajbhar, Kashyap and Kumhars.

    Opposition parties had alleged that the UP government had taken the step in a hurry to gain mileage in the upcoming bypolls in the state. Earlier, the Samajwadi party government had also brought out such a notification before the assembly polls in 2017 but the high court had clamped a stay on the move. The Adityanath government, however, took refuge in the interim order of the high court to issue the notification again on June 24.


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