OpinionOur view
Uttar Pradesh's villages have gone five months without elected councils. Hold the polls
The Allahabad High Court has told the state to hold panchayat elections within three months. The government's reasons for delay are real but not new, and the Constitution does not let a village council outlive its five years.
On 25 May the five-year terms of Uttar Pradesh’s gram pradhans ran out. No elections had been held to replace them. Instead, the state government made the outgoing pradhans administrators of their own villages, and in July did the same for block pramukhs and zila panchayat chairpersons. Nearly five months later, the people of rural Uttar Pradesh still have no say in who runs their village councils.
On Wednesday the Allahabad High Court said enough. A bench of Justices Ajit Kumar and Garima Prasad ordered the state and the State Election Commission to complete the three-tier panchayat polls within three months, using the existing 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes. “Temporary administrative arrangements cannot become a permanent substitute for elected local government,” the court said.
The government is now reported to be weighing an appeal to the Supreme Court. It should not.
What the Constitution says
Article 243E is plain. A panchayat lasts five years from its first meeting, and the election to constitute a new one must be completed before that period ends. The 73rd Amendment put this into the Constitution precisely because states had for decades let local bodies lapse whenever elections were inconvenient.
The High Court was generous to the state. It upheld the administrator arrangement as a stopgap and refused to strike down the law that allows it. What it would not accept was an open-ended stopgap.
The fair objection
The state’s difficulties are not imaginary. The dedicated backward class commission set up in May, as the Supreme Court requires before OBC seats are fixed, has covered only 42 of the 75 districts. The second phase of the census in the state runs from 1 December to 4 January. Examinations fall in the same months, and notification for the assembly election is expected early in January. Officials say three months is too little.
But every one of these problems was visible long before 25 May. The terms of the panchayats were fixed five years ago. The commission was set up five days before they ran out. The State Election Commission told the court it was ready and had published the panchayat voter list on 10 June, and that the government had not made the arrangements it needed. A calendar crowded by the government’s own delay is not a reason for more delay.
On the OBC question, the court has offered a workable path: hold the polls under the present reservation, and let the commission finish its work for the future. The commission’s chairman has said it can split into teams to finish faster if asked.
What the state should do
Accept the order. Ask the State Election Commission to announce a schedule that fits the window, and give it the staff, money and security the court has directed. Run the commission’s work in parallel, so that the next round of polls rests on fresh data.
There is also a political argument. Panchayat polls just before an assembly election are a test every party in the state would rather avoid or control. That is precisely why the timing should not be left to the party in power.
Village councils decide on roads, drains, water and the welfare lists that matter most to rural families. They are the level of government most people actually meet. Uttar Pradesh’s villages have already waited five months for the vote the Constitution promised them. They should not have to wait for an appeal as well.