After the Supreme Court allowed up to 27% reservation for Other Backward Caste (OBC) in all the local body's elections, the election department of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) will hold a fresh draw for reservation for OBC, OBC (women) and general category women seats on July 29. The draw will be held at Vishnudas Bhave auditorium in Vashi at 10 am.
The general election of NMMC is likely to be held in 2022 as the term of the corporation ended in 2020.
The draft of the draw will be published on July 30. Citizens and former public representatives can submit their objections and suggestions to the election department of NMMC between July 30 and August 2. The final list of reservations will be published on August 5. However, there will be no change in the reservation of scheduled caste (women) and scheduled tribes (women) for which the civic body had held the draw on May 31.
The apex court has set the quota cap at 50% and the combined reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs have to fit within it. Thus, the number of seats reserved for the OBC category will be decided after calculating the SC and ST reservations first. In NMMC, a total of 20.5% seats will be reserved for OBC candidates. It means that around 25 seats will be reserved for OBC candidates.
Since 13 seats are reserved for scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, the lottery will be held on the remaining 109 seats. After keeping aside 25 seats for OBC, the remaining 84 seats will be unreserved.
Following the direction from the state election commission, the civic body has reserved 61 out of a total of 122 seats for women. In such a scenario, apart from 61 fixed seats for women, the open category will have a few women candidates in the election. And, the overall number of women representatives may be more than half of the total number of seats.
