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18. The specific challenge is directed against Sections 11A and 12 of the Uttar Pradesh Panchayat Raj Act, 1947 read with the relevant rules as well as Sections 6A, 7A, 18A and 19A of the Uttar Pradesh Kshetra Panchayat and Zilla Panchayat Act, 1961 read with the relevant rules. The grievance is directed against the fact that under these State Legislations, 27% of the seats in panchayats have been reserved for OBCs even though empirical data indicates that nearly 59% of the entire population of the State of Uttar Pradesh belongs to the OBC category. It has been contended that this is a clear case of excessive reservations in favour of a community that is already in a majority. Akin to the arguments made in respect of the State of Karnataka, this argument can be reasonably developed to argue that there is no need for reserving seats in elected local bodies for communities that are already well represented in the political space and do not face serious hurdles in respect of political participation. Furthermore, it was contended that there was no provision for the exclusion of the `creamy layer' in respect of the reservations for OBCs in panchayats. In this respect, Shri Salman Khurshid stressed on the need for the State legislations to be modified in order to ensure that the upper ceiling of 50% reservations was not breached. It was argued that reservation policies should be either in the nature of compensatory discrimination to address historical injustices or in the nature of protective discrimination to protect weaker sections. However, they should not be allowed to become instruments of reverse discrimination which curtail the rights of persons who do not belong to the reserved categories.

20. It was contended that the `reverse discrimination' which takes place in the context of reservations in local self-government is of a higher degree than what transpires in case of education and employment. It was reasoned that in respect of admission to educational institutions and recruitment to government jobs, the meritorious candidates who are displaced by reservations at least have alternatives available to them. However, such alternatives are not open to those who want to contest elections to become members of Panchayats in the areas where they reside. In the petitioners' view, this is not only an unfair limitation on the rights of persons belonging to the general category, but also a measure that frustrates the pursuit of democratic decentralization.