Latest News | Single Judge Order Staying Allotment of Seat to ST Upheld

Chennai, Sep 28 (PTI) A division bench of the Madras High Court has upheld an interim order of a single judge allotting the Kolathur panchayat president post to ST (general).

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The bench of Justices S Vaidyanathan and A A Nakkiran upheld the interim order while dismissing a writ appeal from the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department last week.

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The writ appeal challenged the interim order dated September 15 passed by a single judge while entertaining a writ petition from P Baskar of Kolathur in Kancheepuram district, in and by which he had stayed the operation of a GO of the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (PR-1) department dated September 3 relating to allotment of Kolathur Panchayat President post to ST (General).

Though the 2011 Census earmarked the Kolathur panchayat to SC, a committee constituted by the government following a direction earlier from the High Court, had held that the ST population outnumbered the SC. And based on this, the department issued the September 3 GO allotting the panchayat to ST.

Dismissing the appeal preferred by the department, the bench said that when there is a mala fide exercise of power, then there is no impediment for any court to interfere to curb such exercise, so as to ensure that the interest of justice is met and justice rendered. The reliance on Article 243 (ZG) of the Constitution has no relevance to the case on hand, as the validity of any law relating to the delimitation of constituencies or the allotment of seats to such constituencies has not been called in question in this case.

The argument put forth by Advocate General R Shanmugasundaram that since there is no census available after 2011, the government had no other option, but to arrive at a population figure and reservation of the post only based upon the census of the year 2011, cannot be accepted, especially when the said submission was negatived by this court in its earlier order. The argument appears to be that since the government does not have the correct list of voters of the locality, they must be permitted to act on the incorrect one.

"We are in the era of tech-savvy and it is easy for any government to conduct a survey of population within a short span of time, if they are really interested in it," the bench said and added that the interim order of the single judge is perfectly valid in the eye of law and does not warrant any interference by this court.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)