The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking directions for the Central government to increase the number of Assembly seats in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana through the delimitation process.
The Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice N Kotiswar Singh passed the order on a writ petition filed by Professor K Purushottam Reddy, seeking directions to the Union to operationalise Section 26 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.
The petitioner contended that delimiting the Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies of only the recently-created Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, with the exclusion of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, would create an unreasonable classification.
The Bench observed that Section 26 of the AP Reorganisation Act was subject to the Constitutional provision (Article 170) dealing with delimitation, as per which delimitation could be held only after the first census conducted after 2026.
Noting that Article 170(3) acted as a Constitutional bar in entertaining the plea for delimitation, the Apex Court said allowing such a prayer would open the floodgates of litigation by other States.
It further rejected the argument of discrimination vis-a-vis the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir on the grounds that the provisions dealing with delimitation in states were different when compared to UTs.
The top court of the country observed that constitutional distinctions existed between UTs and states. Since J&K had been reconstituted as a UT, it was not governed by the provisions of Chapter 3 of Part 7 of Constitution. UTs were regulated by parliamentary legislation.
Therefore, the exclusion of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from the delimitation notification issued for J&K was not arbitrary or discriminatory, it held.