The Supreme Court on Wednesday (November 4, 2026) refused to entertain a plea seeking mandatory rotation of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Parliament and State Assemblies, saying that such decisions lie within the domain of the legislature and cannot be ordered by courts.
The petitioner, Jagdish Singh, an elector from the 191-Kadipur Assembly Constituency in Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, had challenged the continued reservation of the constituency for Scheduled Castes, claiming that it had remained reserved for nearly seven decades since its creation. He contended that the absence of a rotation mechanism violated Articles 14, 15, and 19 of the Constitution and restricted the electoral choices of voters by limiting the candidates they could elect to members of the SC community.
So that also defeats your argument,” Justice Bagchi said. “In a political democracy, there are multiple political parties having different ideologies. The voters are expected to vote for the Party, not for the religion. You may like or dislike a particular political ideology. Who is representing that ideology becomes irrelevant. You vote for that ideology. The Bench also distinguished between the right to vote and any claimed right to contest elections from a particular constituency, observing that candidates belonging to the general category remain eligible to contest from constituencies that are not reserved.
Justice Bagchi, during the hearing, said that in a multiparty democracy, voters are expected to make electoral choices based on political ideologies rather than caste or religious considerations.
