The much-awaited Gujarat civic polls scheduled next month got stayed on Friday after the Supreme Court decided to examine certain changes introduced by the State Government to limit the number of wards and enhance seats for SC/ST/OBC without any scientific study or data.
The bench of Justices J Chelameswar and AM Sapre issued notice to Gujarat Government and State Election Commission on a batch of petitions filed by local leaders and prospective candidates in the elections which are to be held in October.
The petitions, argued by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, pointed out that the changes made to the Gujarat Provincial Municipal Corporation Act 1949 and Gujarat local Authorities laws (Amendment) Act 2009 ran contrary to the Constitutional principle of providing proportional representation. The decision to limit the number of wards came into effect from January 15 this year.
For instance, in Vadodara where population has increased to 16.68 lakh the number of wards has been reduced from 25 to 19. From each ward, now four councillors will be selected instead of the earlier practice of electing three members. This would mean that a single ward would now have varied membership and more persons would be clubbed in each ward.
The amendments further provide 50 per cent of reservation in each ward to women and the proportion of SC/ST/OBC seats also has been increased from the earlier “one-third” to double the population in the wards.
The petition, filed by advocate Anirudh Sharma, said that the Constitution Article 243(S) mandates only one member to be elected from each ward and not multiple members. Further, reservation of seats in wards has to follow a scientific basis where there is data to justify enhancement of reserved seats.
The petitioners had earlier failed to convince the Gujarat High Court but the apex court felt that substantial questions of law had been raised in the petition. Sibal sought stay of the elections as the exercise of power by the State just months before polls are to be held was arbitrary and illegal.
While wards got shrinked, Sibal pointed out there was no corresponding decrease in the number of councillors, who instead got increased except for Ahmedabad.