The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to entertain a plea seeking mandatory rotation of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Parliament and state assemblies, holding that the matter falls within the domain of the legislature and cannot be directed by courts.
According to a PTI report A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana declined to interfere with an Allahabad High Court judgment that upheld Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002. The provision allows reserved constituencies to be identified in areas with a comparatively higher proportion of SC and ST populations.
The petition was filed by Jagdish Singh, an elector from the 191-Kadipur Assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur district. He challenged the constituency's continued reservation for Scheduled Castes, claiming it had remained reserved for nearly seven decades since its creation.
Singh argued that the absence of a rotation mechanism violated Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution and restricted voters' electoral choices by limiting the candidates they could elect to members of the SC community.
He also contended that the existing arrangement benefited a limited number of political families rather than advancing the interests of the wider community.
Seeking a mechanism similar to the rotational reservation provided for panchayats and municipalities under Articles 243D and 243T of the Constitution, the petitioner urged the court to direct periodic rotation of constituencies reserved for SCs and STs.
During the hearing, Justice Bagchi questioned the petitioner's argument, observing that voters in a multiparty democracy were expected to make electoral choices based on political ideologies rather than the caste or religion of candidates.
"In a political democracy, there are multiple political parties having different ideologies. The voters are expected to vote for the party, not for the religion. You may like or dislike a particular political ideology. Who is representing that ideology becomes irrelevant. You vote for that ideology. So that also defeats your argument," Justice Bagchi said.
The bench also distinguished between the right to vote and a claimed right to contest elections from a particular constituency, observing that candidates from the general category remained eligible to contest from unreserved constituencies.
Chief Justice Surya Kant said the petitioner had approached the wrong forum to seek a change in the policy, adding that the demand for rotation should instead be taken up with Parliament.
In a lighter remark, the CJI suggested that the petitioner could also pursue the issue through public protests and demonstrations.
"The challenge to Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act has been turned down in the impugned judgment. The case of the petitioner is that the Assembly seats should be reserved on rotational basis for members of ST and SC communities as in municipal corporations.
"The High Court has turned down the case observing that although ideally rotation ought to be followed, such a recourse cannot be directed by the court and it is in the ambit of the Parliament. We see no ground to take a different view," the bench said in its order.
The court, however, clarified that the petitioner was free to approach public representatives and persuade them to adopt the principle of rotation.
(With inputs from PTI)