By IANS,
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday dismissed all petitions seeking quashing of the state election commission’s decision to reserve seats for Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections in April.
A group of councillors belonging to both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress had moved the court challenging the earmarking of seats as reserved for SCs.
But a division bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Rajiv Shakdher said: “We do not find any merit in the petitions, they are dismissed.”
The court declined the contentions of the petitioner that questioned the delegation of power by the Delhi government to the state election commission for issuing the Jan 27 notification. The bench observed that this was not unconstitutional.
The bench also upheld the decision of the state election commission to reserve seats for SC candidates on the basis of the 2001 census.
The petitioners had contended that the poll commission’s notification was “arbitrary, malafide and without any logic” as the commission had reserved seats for the SCs on the basis of the 2001 census and not the recent 2011 census.
The Election Commission “acted without any logic” in reserving the seats on the basis of the 2001 census – reserving those seats where the SC population was only 12 percent, and making those as general seats where the SC population was more than 40 percent, they contended.
The Election Commission opposed the plea, saying the rationale behind the reservation was to give due representation to SC candidates.