Law & Justice

Supreme Court Declares It Cannot Overrule Legislature on SC/ST Constituency Reservations

By Dhananjay Mahapatra

The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, ruled that it cannot interfere with the legislature’s exclusive authority to determine the reservation of assembly or parliamentary constituencies for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana dismissed a petition that sought to annul a notification reserving the Kadipur assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh for Scheduled Castes. The bench stated that identifying constituencies for reservation is a legislative prerogative and that the court cannot alter those criteria. It suggested that the petitioner could instead use protests to persuade elected representatives to consider changes, such as adopting a rotational reservation system. Senior advocate Gagan Gupta, representing the petitioner, questioned the geographic basis for reserving constituencies and asked whether Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002, could allow the same territories to remain reserved for successive elections without periodic rotation. The court replied that delimitation is a legislative exercise and its guidelines cannot be modified by the judiciary, and it cannot mandate the Delimitation Commission to adopt a rotational policy. The Supreme Court’s decision aligns with the Allahabad High Court’s earlier view that Articles 330 and 332, which provide for reservation of constituencies for SCs and STs, protect the rights of candidates to contest from those reserved seats.}