Jaipur: The reservation lottery for 457 panchayat samiti bodies in Rajasthan was drawn Wednesday, paving the way for 221 women to be elected as pradhan (chief) across the state. In Jaipur district, only four of the 22 panchayat samiti have been kept unreserved, while women will be eligible to head 11 under different reservation categories.
The reservation lottery for 457 Panchayat Samiti pradhans in Rajasthan was drawn on Wednesday
In Jaipur, the lottery allocated two panchayat samiti — Tunga and Aandhi — to Scheduled Caste open category, while Rampura Dabri and Kotkhawada were reserved for SC women. Chomu and Kishangarh Renwal were allotted to Scheduled Tribe open category, with Amarsar reserved for ST women.Under the OBC quota, Madhorajpura and Sanganer were kept open for OBC candidates, while pradhan posts in Jobner and Mauzamabad were reserved for OBC women. Four panchayat samiti — Shahpura, Bassi, Jamwa Ramgarh, Phagi and Sambhar Lake — have been kept completely unreserved, allowing candidates from any category to contest the pradhan post. Six others — Govindgarh, Dudu, Jalsu, Chaksu, Amer and Jhotwara — have been reserved for women under the unreserved category.The state-level lottery also finalised reservations for 1,403 zila parishad member posts and 8,245 panchayat samiti member posts, with women getting 50% reservation within each category.Across Rajasthan, 79 pradhan posts have been reserved for Scheduled Castes, 93 for Scheduled Tribes and 56 for Other Backward Classes, while 229 posts have been placed in the unreserved category.In Jaipur, reservation for panchayat samiti member and zila parishad member posts was also decided through a lottery. Of the 57 zila parishad wards, 10 SC (5 women) and eight ST seats (4 women) had been fixed earlier, while reservation for 10 OBC wards (5 women) was decided through a lottery. In all, 29 seats were kept under unreserved category (14 women).Of the 386 wards in the district’s 22 panchayat samiti, 93 have been kept unreserved, allowing candidates from any category to contest. The remaining 293 wards have been reserved for SC, ST, OBC or women candidates.Udaipur will not have a single OBC pradhan. In Dungarpur, Banswara, Salumber and Pratapgarh, all pradhan posts have been reserved for the ST category. While Udaipur has 10 seats reserved for women, Jodhpur has 11 reserved seats for women.The reservation exercise is part of preparations for upcoming three-tier Panchayati Raj elections and determines the category and gender under which candidates can contest pradhan posts in each panchayat samiti.