NEW DELHI, November 4 (Aalimi Nation) – The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to entertain a public interest petition that sought rotation of Assembly constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes, saying the question is one for Parliament and not for the courts.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant refused to interfere with a judgment of the Allahabad High Court that had upheld Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002. The provision allows reserved constituencies to be identified in areas with a comparatively higher population of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.
The plea was filed by Jagdish Singh, a voter in the Kadipur Assembly constituency in Sultanpur district, Uttar Pradesh. The seat has been reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates continuously for decades. Singh argued that the absence of rotation violates Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution, which deal with equality before the law, non-discrimination and freedoms including expression.
According to the petition, voters in such a constituency are limited to choosing among Scheduled Caste candidates, which he said dilutes their right to vote. He also contended that long-running reservation of a single seat tends to benefit a small number of families and not the wider community. He asked the court to direct that reserved seats be rotated, as is done for local bodies.
The bench said the matter lies in the legislative domain and cannot be settled through a direction from the court. It indicated that the petitioner's remedy lies in raising the demand before Parliament, which frames the law on delimitation and reservation. The court was not persuaded by the argument that the lack of rotation, by itself, breaches the Constitution.
The Allahabad High Court had earlier rejected the same challenge. It held that reserving constituencies with a higher share of Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe residents does not violate the Constitution, and that the Delimitation Act places the power of delimitation in a statutory commission and not with individual citizens or the courts.
The petition relied on a comparison with panchayats and municipalities. Articles 243D and 243T of the Constitution expressly provide that seats reserved in those bodies are to be allotted by rotation to different constituencies. The Constitution contains no equivalent requirement for seats in State Assemblies or the Lok Sabha, which is the gap the petitioner asked the court to fill.
Reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in legislatures is meant to ensure that these communities are represented in proportion to their population. Which constituencies are reserved is decided during delimitation, an exercise carried out by a commission appointed under an Act of Parliament.
With the petition dismissed, the Allahabad High Court ruling stands and the Kadipur seat continues as a reserved constituency under the existing delimitation. Any change to the way reserved seats are chosen or rotated would now require legislative action, either through an amendment to the Delimitation Act or through a constitutional amendment, neither of which is currently before Parliament.
