( 1 ) THESE writ petitions have been filed as public interest litigations. The petitioner in W. P. No. 39572 of 2000 is a member of the Karnataka legislative assembly elected from krishnaraja constituency mysore. The petitioner in W. P. No. 31 of 2001 is the resident of raichur town and is an elected member from ward 17, raichur city municipal council. They have filed the present writ petitions questioning the constitutional validity of the two notifications dated 11-12-2000 issued by the state government respectively under Section 21 read with Section 7 of the Karnataka municipal corporations Act, 1976 (in short, the 'corporation act') and under Section 13 of the municipalities Act, 1964 (in short, the 'municipalities act' ).

( 2 ) THE impugned notifications pertain to the corporation of city of Mysore and city municipal council of raichur. These notifications have been placed at annexures-a to the respective writ petitions. By these notifications, the state government has inter alia provided for reservation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, backward classes and for women in each territorial ward. Annexure-1 to the impugned notifications sets out category of reservation for each of the territorial wards in which the respective urban local bodies have been divided.

( 3 ) SIMILAR notifications have been issued in respect of all other 147 urban local bodies comprising of city municipal councils, town municipal councils and city municipal corporations since for these bodies elections were required to be held during January, 2001.

( 4 ) THE determination of categories of reservation for individual wards in the urban local bodies as provided under the notifications like the impugned ones has triggered controversies leading to filing of a set of writ petitions including the present writ petitions. Admittedly, category of reservation made for each of the wards has been changed from what was determined during the earlier elections to the local bodies held in 1996.

( 5 ) ACCORDING to the state government, the above changes in the categories of reservation for the wards have been made to comply with the requirements of article 243-t of the Constitution of india, Section 7 read with Section 21 of the Corporation Act and Section 11 read with Section 13 of the municipalities act.

( 6 ) THE petitioners and the government are not at issue that the keeping in view the above Provisions, the allotment of seat to a particular category of reservation in a given territorial ward should not be continued in successive elections of the local bodies and there is a mandate for effecting the rotation of the reserved categories amongst the different wards of such bodies, in successive elections.

( 7 ) THE main grievance of the petitioners in the present public interest litigations is though the rotation of categories of reservation is permissible both under the constitution and the respective statutes but the same has to be done in accordance with the professed policy identifiable through the statutory rules to be framed under the acts and not in the manner in which the government has done under the impugned notifications, which hardly conform to any principle or pattern based on rationality, reasonableness and transparency. According to the petitioners, reallocation of reservations has been done by the government by adopting the policy of pick and choose in order to suit the interests of members belonging to the political party in power. It is their contention that the impugned notifications providing for wardwise reservations does not conform to rotational policy envisaged under the Constitution and it has been engineered with mala fide to harm the members of political parties in opposition or the prospective candidates who may be found to be unfavourable to their interest. It is also their contention that the power of rotation has been exercised by the government for extraneous reasons, which are impermissible in any democra