On December 28, the Uttar Pradesh government formed a five-member committee (for a six-month period) to conduct a survey to ensure adequate reservation for OBCs in the State Urban Body Elections by fulfilling the "triple test" formality mandated by the Supreme Court. 

The state government decided to form the committee a day after the Allahabad High Court ordered the State Election Commission to immediately notify the Urban Local Body Polls without OBC reservation. 

The Court ruled that the state government did not follow the Triple Test Formality established by the Supreme Court. 

The relevant UP CM statement is as follows:

" The Uttar Pradesh government will set up a commission in the perspective of urban body elections and provide reservation facility to the citizens of Other Backward Classes (OBC) on the basis of triple test. Only after this, the urban body general elections will be conducted. If necessary, the State Government will also appeal in the Hon'ble Supreme Court after considering all the legal aspects regarding the decision of the Hon'ble High Court."

For the uninitiated, the Apex Court made the triple test formality for Local Body elections mandatory in the case of Vikas Kishanrao Gawali, wherein the Top Court noted that a triple test is to be followed before provisioning reservation for the OBC category. 

The aforementioned triple test entails 

(1) establishing a dedicated Commission to conduct a concurrent rigorous empirical investigation into the nature and implications of the State's backwardness qua local bodies; 

(2) specifying the proportion of reservation that must be provisioned locally based on Commission recommendations in order to avoid overbreadth; and 

(3) not more than half of the total number of seats reserved for SCs/STs/OBCs are taken together.

The government now hopes to fulfil the first requirement of the test by forming the commission. 

The committee would be chaired by Justice (Retd.) Ram Avtar Singh. Former IAS Chob Singh Verma, retired IAS Mahendra Kumar, former legal advisor Santosh Kumar Vishwakarma, and former additional legal advisor and additional district judge Brijesh Kumar Soni are also members of the panel.