Over 100 petitions in HC question delimitation, rotation of reservation in upcoming local polls

Over a 100 petitions have been filed in the Bombay High Court against the state government’s recent delimitation exercise and its method of rotating reserved seats in local bodies

MUMBAI: Over a 100 petitions have been filed in the Bombay High Court against the state government’s recent delimitation exercise and its method of rotating reserved seats in local bodies. Petitioners say the state’s approach goes against constitutional principles of local autonomy. The court will hear the matter today.

Gavel and law books (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The petitions, filed by elected representatives, former councillors and voters from several districts, claimed that the state has violated the constitutional principle of local-body governance by changing the ongoing rotation cycle for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) seats.

In Maharashtra, reservation for SC, ST and Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections has historically followed a rotation model introduced in the 1996 Rules. With each election cycle, the reservation in the wards gets rotated. The rotation method was adopted to ensure that different communities had opportunities to be represented over time, as a ward reserved for one group in one election would be open or reserved for a different group in the next.

Rule 4 of those 1996 rules ensures that the category allotted to a particular seat changed after every election, so that any group that received reservation in one cycle would not retain it in the next. The controversy arose when the state government notified new rules in 2025, introducing Rule 12, which treats the upcoming election as the “first election”.

Petitioners at the high court argued that Rule 12 effectively resets the reservation cycle and disregards the rotation that has been consistently followed since 1996. The petitioners argued that while seats reserved for OBCs and women have completed their full rotation, SC and ST seats are only midway through their term. Starting the upcoming elections as the “first election” under Rule 12 would reset the cycle and defeat the purpose of rotating reserved seats fairly across wards.

Senior advocate Dr Uday Warunjikar, representing several petitioners, argued that Rule 12 must be interpreted along with the other rules to ensure the original intent of the reservation policy is maintained. Other lawyers stressed that Rule 4 should be followed to ensure continuity, instead of restarting the rotation from scratch.

The state government has questioned whether these petitions can even be heard, pointing out that the Nagpur bench of the high court had already dismissed similar petitions and the Supreme Court had refused to intervene in the matter. The state also told the court that the recent restructuring of the boundaries of rural local bodies made a fresh delimitation exercise unavoidable, this naturally affected the number of councillors and made it necessary to re-allocate reserved seats in wards.

The State Election Commission (SEC) told the court that as a constitutional body it is bound to conduct elections according to laws and rules framed by the legislature and cannot alter reservation or delimitation on its own.

The issue has become more urgent after the SEC suspended elections in at least 20 municipal councils and panchayats, because of widespread mistakes in the nomination and symbol allotment process. The affected areas include Baramati and Talegaon in Pune Devlali, Kopargaon, Nevasa and Pathardi in Ahilyanagar; and councils in Satara, Yavatmal, Chandrapur, Akola, Amravati, Dharashiv, Solapur, Thane and Nanded.

While these suspensions stem from administrative lapses such as delays in responding to the appeals filed by candidates, or the lack of a mandatory withdrawal window, officials admitted that the ongoing court cases over delimitation and reservation have added more uncertainty to the election process.

The court has now asked the state to file a short reply explaining the recent amendments to the Maharashtra Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis Act, 1961. The outcome of Tuesday’s hearing is expected to influence how and when the local body elections will be held across the state, especially since the Supreme Court has set a deadline of January 31, 2026 to complete the entire process.