‘Dialled wrong number, season of dharna’: CJI’s quip at man seeking rotation of SC-ST reserved seats | India News
NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Wednesday quipped at a petitioner to organise public protests and demonstrations while rejecting his plea seeking mandatory rotation of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Parliament and state assemblies.A bench of CJI Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana upheld the Allahabad high court order validating Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002, which provides for the identification of reserved constituencies in areas where the proportion of SC/ST residents is comparatively high.The Supreme Court, however, said the petitioner was free to approach public representatives and persuade them to adopt the principle of rotation.“You are dialling the wrong number. This is a season of dharna, protest etc. You should also do the same,” Bar and Bench quoted CJI Surya Kant as saying in a lighter vein.“This is also a good ground for protest,” he added.During the hearing, Justice Bagchi said that in a multiparty democracy, voters are expected to make electoral choices based on political ideologies rather than caste or religious considerations.“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 any claimed right to contest an election from a particular constituency. It observed that candidates belonging to the general category remain eligible to contest from constituencies that are not reserved.The petitioner, Jagdish Singh, had challenged the continued reservation of his constituency for Scheduled Castes, claiming that it had remained reserved for nearly seven decades since its creation.He 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 further claimed that the existing arrangement benefited a handful 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 bench to direct periodic rotation of SC/ST-reserved constituencies.Justice Bagchi, however, disagreed with the argument that candidates from the majority community would anyway get elected in constituencies with a high SC population, making reservation unnecessary.“That proceeds on the idea that a majority community will vote on community or caste lines. They may not vote on community and caste lines. The High Court cannot judicially pronounce on a democratic choice. That is for the voters to decide,” Justice Bagchi said.The bench clarified that it could not rewrite the Constitution or the statute by introducing a rotation requirement that finds no mention in Articles 330 and 332 or the Delimitation Act.The Allahabad high court had held that Articles 330 and 332 merely prescribe the number of reserved seats in proportion to the population and leave the methodology for identifying reserved constituencies to Parliament under Article 327.
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It had found Section 9(1)(c) neither ultra vires nor violative of fundamental rights, ruling that courts cannot issue a mandamus directing the legislature to introduce a rotation provision.While acknowledging that rotation could better advance social and political justice by allowing SC/ST candidates to contest even from constituencies with smaller reserved-category populations, the high court had emphasised that the policy decision rests exclusively with Parliament.
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