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New Delhi: “We are elected representatives. But now we have been reduced to sarkari karmacharis (government employees).”

With these words, Lavkush Singh, a village head from Lucknow, summed up the frustration bubbling across rural Uttar Pradesh.

Singh’s statement referred to the unprecedented decision taken by the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government to appoint outgoing village heads (gram pradhans) as temporary administrators rather than conducting fresh elections as constitutionally mandated.

The tenure of pradhans and other elected representatives of rural local bodies in the state ended on May 26, 2026. However, the UP government has deferred elections, citing a delay in constituting the mandatory Other Backward Classes (OBC) Commission which is required to finalise quotas for the polls.

It was only on May 18, long after the timeline had become pressing, that the state cabinet approved the formation of the UP State Dedicated Backward Classes Commission. The commission is mandatory under a 2021 Supreme Court ruling requiring an empirical study into “the nature and implications of backwardness” before fixing quotas for OBC candidates.

A copy of the UP government order on the appointment of outgoing pradhans as administrators, Photo: By arrangement.

UP has 57,694 gram pradhans, the democratically elected heads of gram panchayats, which are the primary units of local self-governance in villages.

The unexplained delay in holding elections, combined with the unorthodox move to appoint outgoing pradhans instead of administrative officials as interim caretakers, has left village heads confused, fuelled suspicion among opposition parties and drawn sharp judicial scrutiny. Several petitions challenging the government’s decision have been filed before the Allahabad high court.

Rural body polls in India, especially in the Hindi-speaking heartland, are notoriously fierce. Often fraught with cut-throat competition and pre and post-poll violence, these hyper-local rivalries frequently trigger broader communal, casteist and political tensions while exposing internal fault lines within political parties.

Critics view the move as a calculated strategy by the BJP government to avoid rural body elections mere months before the high-stakes assembly elections due early next year.

High court calls out government’s decision

The government’s “stop-gap arrangement” has already hit a legal roadblock.

On June 25, while hearing a petition filed by one Arvind Rathore seeking to quash the May 25 and 26 government orders, Justice Siddharth Nandan of the Allahabad high court delivered a sharp reprimand.

The judge noted that the state’s orders – issued under Section 12(3-A) of the UP Panchayat Raj Act, 1947 – relied on provisions that had already been declared unconstitutional by a division bench back in 2000 for violating Articles 243-E and 243-K of the constitution.

Consequently, Justice Nandan declared the government orders non est (legally non-existent) and ruled that pradhans “cannot be permitted” to continue as administrators. However, the court gave the state government until July 10 to file a detailed affidavit outlining the process of the OBC commission and providing a clear timeline for holding elections.

The court also found it “surprising” that the commission’s report had still not been submitted and........

© The Wire