CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has dismissed a PIL for a direction to the Election Commission of India and SEC to de-reserve the Arakkonam SC constituency of the Tamil Nadu Assembly to general category for the 2021 polls and for future elections as may be notified.
The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sunder, concurred with the submission of Niranjan Rajagopal, counsel for ECI, that Article 329(a) of the Constitution of India is a constitutional bar, owing to which, such a petition should not be entertained by the court.
Article 329(a) says the validity of any law relating to the delimitation of constituencies or the allotment of seats to such constituencies, made or purporting to be made under Article 327 or Article 328, shall not be called in question in any court.
"In the light of the aforesaid position and in the light of the constitutional bar under Article 329(a) of the Constitution of India extracted supra, we are not inclined to entertain this writ petition. The writ petition is dismissed," the bench said.
The bench was also informed that the delimitation commission was a onetime statutory body.
It was last constituted in 2002 and delimitation exercise was completed in 2006 and a delimitation commission can come into existence only when a statute is next made, it was further submitted.
The PIL was filed by one M Sridhar.