The appeal will be heard, but the vote will not wait: the Rajasthan High Court admits appeal on SC/ST ward reservation in Majhiwala, where the appellant alleges the population data is wrong, and declines to stay the election now under way, with the Gram Panchayat process due to conclude on November 17.
Jodhpur: A special appeal against the reservation of wards and the sarpanch post of Majhiwala Gram Panchayat, Balotra district, for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been admitted by the Rajasthan High Court, though it has refused to halt the panchayat election process in the meantime. The appellant alleges that the reservation was worked out on false population figures. The appeal is listed after six weeks [Kanti Lal v. State of Rajasthan and Others].
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal and Justice Baljinder Singh Sandhu passed the order of October 15, 2026 in D.B. Special Appeal Writ No. 1237/2026. It dismissed the stay application, issued notice, which was accepted for the respondents, and admitted the appeal in view of the questions raised on the maintainability of the writ petition.
No stay when elections are close
The Bench first traced how the Gram Panchayat elections reached this point. The delimitation exercise had been challenged before the High Court in Sheela Kumari v. State of Rajasthan, where a timeline for the elections was fixed. The Supreme Court then dismissed the connected special leave petitions after the State undertook to complete the elections by April 15, 2026. Later, in a PIL titled Girraj Singh Devanda v. State of Rajasthan, a Division Bench extended the deadline to November 15, 2026. The State Election Commission published the programme on October 3, 2026, and the Gram Panchayat process is to end by November 17, 2026.
Drawing on Election Commission of India v. Ashok Kumar, Lakshmi Charan Sen v. A.K.M. Hassan Uzzaman and Anugrah Narain Singh v. State of U.P., the Bench held:
“…where elections are imminent, the High Court while exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, should be cautious and refrain from passing orders that may interrupt, delay or postpone the election process. The bar contained in Article 243-O of the Constitution also serves this object.”
It therefore declined to interfere in a way that would hinder the election process, and found no interim order called for. Yet, the Bench said, “considering the legal grounds raised regarding the maintainability of the writ petition, the appeal deserves admission.”
The appellant’s case: 14 voters, and a population count he calls fake
Kanti Lal had gone to court against the reservation of the wards, and of the Gram Panchayat itself, for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. His writ petition alleged that the Gram Panchayat had just 14 voters of the Scheduled category, so there should have been no such reservation, and that the population shown for the purpose was fake. He also challenged a notification of September 24, 2026 concerning the post of Sarpanch of Panchayat Samiti Majiwala.
A Single Judge dismissed the writ petition on October 9, 2026 as not maintainable under Article 243-O of the Constitution, since the election programme had already been published on October 3, 2026. The special appeal came after that.
Article 243-O restricts the courts from interfering in Panchayat elections, including on delimitation and allotment of seats, and leaves challenges to an election to be raised by an election petition. Courts have long been wary of stopping an election midway. The question here is when the electoral process is to be treated as having begun.
Programme or notification: when did the election begin?
Counsel for the appellant argued that October 3, 2026 saw only an election programme, and that no election notification under Rule 23 of the Rajasthan Panchayat Raj Election Rules, 1994 had been issued, so the Article 243-O bar did not apply. He cited Union Territory of Ladakh v. Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (2023 INSC 804) for the proposition that a High Court’s jurisdiction under Article 226 is not absolutely barred, and sought to distinguish N.P. Ponnuswami v. Returning Officer and a Single Judge ruling in Harish Kumar v. State of Rajasthan, which concerned municipal elections.
Advocate General Rajendra Prasad, for the State, said the Single Judge’s order was correct. In his submission, the State Election Commission issues the election programme for the whole State and the Rule 23 notice for each Gram Panchayat follows under the Commission’s general directions, so the process began on October 3, 2026. He described the reservation as an administrative exercise done fairly and transparently after delimitation, and argued that the petition raised disputed questions of fact that do not suit writ jurisdiction, still less an intra-court appeal. N.P. Ponnuswami and Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner were relied on for the view that “election” takes in the entire process.
Questions left for the appeal
The Bench has not decided whether the population figures behind the reservation were wrong, or whether the Article 243-O bar applied when only an election programme, and not the Rule 23 notification, had been issued. Both are for the appeal. What the order settles for now is narrower: with Rajasthan’s Gram Panchayat elections due to conclude on November 17, 2026, the Court will not stop the process while it examines maintainability.
The allegations about the population data are the appellant’s contentions and have not been tested on merits, and the State disputes them.
Case Title: Kanti Lal v. State of Rajasthan and Others [D.B. Special Appeal Writ No. 1237/2026]
Bench: Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal and Justice Baljinder Singh Sandhu, Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur
Date of Order: October 15, 2026
Appearances: Advocates Moti Singh, Manish Patel and Pramod Gour for the appellant; Senior Advocate-cum-Advocate General Rajendra Prasad with Advocates Aniruddh Singh Shekhawat, Ayush Gehlot and Rakesh Sharma for the respondents