Court reserves order on MCD polls

The Delhi High Court Thursday reserved its order on petitions by a group of councillors seeking quashing of the state election commission’s decision to reserve seats for candidates of the Scheduled Castes in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections to be held in April.

The councillors of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress moved the court challenging the earmarking of seats as reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs).

The division bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Rajiv Shakdher reserved the verdict after counsel from both the sides concluded their arguments.

The petitioners contended that the poll commission’s notification reserving the seats as “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 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 that the rationale behind the reservation was to give due representation to SC candidates.

The state election commission Jan 27, issued a notification for reserving the seats for SC candidates.