A glaring anomaly in the reservation roster for the upcoming panchayat elections has left residents of Bavasani panchayat in Himachal Pradesh's Nalagarh subdivision without the prospect of electing a pradhan.
The post has been reserved for an OBC woman despite the fact that not a single Other Backward Class (OBC) family currently resides in the panchayat.
The controversial reservation decision has sparked resentment among villagers and political leaders alike, who have termed it a serious administrative lapse. Former BJP MLA KL Thakur criticised the move, calling it "an act of utter negligence".
"It is shocking that in a panchayat where not a single OBC individual resides, the seat of pradhan has been reserved for an OBC candidate," Thakur said, adding that a similar situation had occurred in the past as well. He accused officials of failing to rectify the anomaly despite earlier experience.
The district administration, however, has defended its position citing procedural constraints. Deputy Commissioner Manmohan Sharma confirmed that the panchayat would remain without an elected pradhan for six months because no eligible OBC woman candidate is available to contest the reserved seat.
According to Sharma, altering the reservation category at this stage would have disturbed the reservation roster of neighbouring panchayats since the election process had already commenced. He also acknowledged that a similar deadlock had affected Bavasani panchayat in earlier elections, forcing authorities to defer the pradhan election then as well.
Bavasani panchayat, with a population of 3,234, had the pradhan seat reserved for a woman from the general category in 2020 and for a Scheduled Caste candidate in 2015. Under the latest roster, the seat has now been earmarked for an OBC woman, triggering widespread disappointment among villagers who were awaiting the declaration of reservation categories.
The root of the controversy lies in the data relied upon by election authorities. Officials based the reservation on an OBC Commission report prepared in 1995, which recorded 1,235 OBC individuals in the panchayat. Critics argue that using a three-decade-old report to determine present-day reservations defies logic and ignores demographic changes over time.
The issue also reflects wider shifts in Solan district's rural demographics. The OBC population in rural areas has declined from 5.1 per cent to 4.7 per cent following the merger of several OBC-dominated villages from the Doon Assembly segment into the Baddi Municipal Corporation. As these villages now fall under an urban civic body, their population is excluded from rural reservation calculations. Consequently, no zila parishad seat in the district has been reserved for OBCs this time.
Under the panchayat reservation system, seats are rotated among SC, ST, OBC and women categories. While 50 per cent seats are reserved for women, a minimum 5 per cent population of a category is required to claim reservation. The system also mandates rotational reservation and limits consecutive reservation of a seat to two terms unless statutory reservation requirements remain unmet.