Around a month before the scheduled elections to the trifurcated Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the Delhi high court on Wednesday dismissed a bunch of pleas by councillors of the civic body against the decision of the state election commission to reserve some seats for women and scheduled castes candidates.
Dismissing the pleas of a dozen MCD councillors, a bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Rajiv Shakdher said, “We find nothing wrong with the action of the SEC (State Election Commission) qua the mode and manner of reservation of seats for the SC and the women and, thus, dismiss the writ petitions leaving the parties to bear their own costs”.
The court, in its 55-page judgment, said it did not find fault with the delegation of power either by the Delhi government to the SEC to earmark wards and reserve them for SC and woman candidates.
“We are of the unequivocal view that no fault can be found with the delegation of power under Section 490B of the said Act (Delhi Municipal Corporation Act) by the notification dated January 24, 2012 and the challenge to the same is misplaced. In our opinion, the fact that the Central and the state government in exercise of the powers conferred under the DMC Act have chosen to delegate this function, by issuance of notification under Section 490A and 490B of the DMC Act, respectively, does not in any manner, in our opinion, erode the independent constitutional status enjoyed by the SEC under the Constitution,” said the judgment.
The twelve petitions had challenged the SEC notification of January 27, by which a list of reserved seats in all three corporations of Delhi on the basis of 2001 Census was prepared.
The petitions said that the state poll panel has reserved seats in an “arbitrary” manner, resulting in “wrong and incorrect reservation.”
They had alleged in their petitions that the SEC was wrong in considering the population of SCs in Assembly segments instead of taking into account their numbers in the municipal wards. The result was that certain wards with higher percentage of SC population have been declared under general category ward while others with lesser SC population were reserved, they said.