Lucknow, Jul 10 The Allahabad High Court on Friday sought the Uttar Pradesh government's response on a public interest litigation challenging the constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Panchayat Raj Act under which the state appointed village pradhans as administrators of gram panchayats after the expiry of their five-year term.
The court fixed August 4 as the next date of hearing.
A division bench of justices Rajan Roy and Manjari Shukla in Lucknow passed the order while hearing the PIL filed by S K Sharma.
The petition argued that Section 12(3-A) goes beyond the powers permitted by the Constitution and is therefore unconstitutional or legally invalid as it enables the state government to retain the control of outgoing village pradhans by appointing them as administrators after the constitutionally mandated five-year tenure of gram panchayats has ended.
It also challenges the state government's May 25 order appointing pradhans as administrators across Uttar Pradesh, alleging that it amounts to an impermissible extension of their tenure.
The bench also sought the status of the Backward Classes Commission's report, which is a prerequisite for conducting panchayat elections involving reservation.
During the hearing, the petitioner submitted that a similar provision introduced through an ordinance in 2000 had been struck down by the high court in the Prem Lal Patel case.
Although the state had challenged that judgement before the Supreme Court, the apex court later disposed of the matter after elections were held and the ordinance was replaced by legislation, leaving the legal question open for determination by the high court.
Relying on that background, the petitioner argued that the subsequently enacted section of the Uttar Pradesh Panchayat Raj Act suffers from the same constitutional infirmities and, therefore, the May 25 government order is liable to be quashed.
Appearing for the state government, senior advocate J N Mathur submitted that the division bench was competent to examine the constitutional validity of the provision of the Act and that there was no need to refer the matter to a larger bench since the Supreme Court had expressly left the issue for the high court's consideration.
