The Supreme Court has said it cannot rewrite the Constitution or the Delimitation Act to introduce a rotation requirement, rejecting a plea for Rotation Of SC/ST Reserved Seats in Assemblies and Parliament and pointing the petitioner to elected representatives.
New Delhi: Declining to interfere with an Allahabad High Court judgment that upheld Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002, the Supreme Court on Wednesday (November 4) rejected a plea seeking mandatory rotation of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in State Legislative Assemblies and Parliament [Jagdish Singh v. Union of India].
A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana held that the issue falls within the legislative domain and allowed the petitioner to take his demand to elected representatives.
The order
“The High Court has turned down the case observing that although ideally rotation ought to be followed, such a recourse cannot be directed by the court and it is in the ambit of the Parliament. We see no ground to take a different view. The petitioner may approach the public representatives to build consensus with a view to persuade them to follow the rotation principle which the petitioner relies upon on the basis of the reservation made by the delimitation commission in 2008.”
What the Bench said during the hearing
In oral observations, the Bench said that voters in a multiparty democracy are expected to vote on political ideology rather than caste or religion. It distinguished the constitutional right to vote from any claimed right to contest from a particular constituency, noting that general-category candidates can contest from non-reserved seats.
Justice Bagchi remarked orally:
“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 also disagreed with the reasoning that a majority community in a constituency will anyway get elected, so reservation is unnecessary where the SC population is high. “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,” he said. Whether concentrating reserved seats in areas with larger SC/ST populations creates caste divisions, he noted, is for the legislature to examine and does not by itself make the law unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Surya Kant told the petitioner he was “dialling the wrong number”, since the demand for rotation should be raised before Parliament. In a lighter vein, he added that it was a good season for protests and this too could be a ground for one.
The Bench clarified that it could not rewrite the Constitution or the statute by introducing a rotation requirement absent from Articles 330 and 332 or the Delimitation Act.
The petitioner’s case and the High Court’s ruling
The petitioner, Jagdish Singh, is an elector of the 191-Kadipur Assembly Constituency in Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. He argued that the seat has remained reserved for Scheduled Castes for nearly seven decades since it was created.
Section 9(1)(c) of the Delimitation Act requires constituencies reserved for SCs and STs to be located in areas where the proportion of their population is comparatively large. Singh contended that continuous reservation without rotation violates Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution, dilutes the right to vote by compelling voters to choose only from SC candidates, and benefits a few families rather than the wider community.
He sought a rotation system similar to the one provided for panchayats and municipalities under Articles 243D and 243T.
The Allahabad High Court, through a Bench of Justice Alok Mathur and Justice Amitabh Kumar Rai, had held that Articles 330 and 332 only prescribe the number of reserved seats in proportion to population and leave the method of identifying them to Parliament under Article 327. It found Section 9(1)(c) neither ultra vires nor violative of fundamental rights, and ruled that courts cannot direct the legislature to insert a rotation provision, while acknowledging that rotation could better advance social and political justice.
Why the order matters
Reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies under Articles 330 and 332 is tied to population, while the method of identifying which constituencies are reserved is left to Parliament and the Delimitation Commission. The order confirms that courts will not read a rotation requirement into this scheme, unlike panchayats and municipalities, where the Constitution itself provides for rotation.
The debate the petitioner raised, that long-term reservation of the same seats can concentrate political opportunity, has now been placed squarely with the legislature. Any move towards rotation will need a legislative or constitutional change, not a court direction.
Case Title: Jagdish Singh v. Union of India [SLP (C) No. 37437 of 2026]
Bench: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana
Date of Order: November 4, 2026