1. When politics has become a means for ruling rather than serving the citizens, the caste based reservations provided for Panchayat elections takes this unholy desire, many levels down, throwing up the dust in the form of spree of litigation before constitutional courts, more often than not, at all possible stages and for variety of shades of reasons for filing petitions.

2. This election battle has been drawn by Smt. Latha and 22 others, the elected members of Hassan Zilla Panchayat belonging to Janata Dal (S) Political party and without claiming any individual relief for themselves in these writ petitions and several other connected cases, which are on the board of the Court are pitched against the State Government and its authorities and all the 30 Zilla Panchayats of the State and there are 95 Respondents in Writ Petition Nos.22740-762/2016, the lead case, questioning the validity of the Notification dated 15/04/2016 issued by the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department of the State, notifying the reservations for the posts of Presidents and Vice Presidents of Zilla Panchayats formed during March 2016 for 30 Zilla Panchayats, after a draft Notification with these reservations were notified in the Notification Annexure B dated 05/04/2016 and various persons including the present petitioners filed their objections vide Annexure C dated 13/04/2016 to the Principal Secretary of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj.

3. The facts are illustratively taken from Writ Petition Nos.29740-762/2016(LB-RES) Smt. Latha and others Vs. State of Karnataka and others, in which mainly the challenge has been laid to the reservation for ‘Scheduled Tribe (Woman)’ for President’s post and ‘General’ for Vice President’s post under the impugned Notification.

4. The challenge is that the relevant Rules namely Karnataka Panchayat Raj (Reservation of Offices of Adhyaksha and Upadhyaksha of Zilla Panchayat) Rules, 2005, as amended from time to time upto 2016, framed for affixing such reservation for various Zilla Panchayats have been breached by the State with impunity and the Judgments of this Court and the Supreme Court have not been followed by the State and such reservations have been fixed to suit the political goals of the ruling party of the State, namely Congress (I).

5. For Hassan Zilla Panchayat, the allegation of the petitioners is, that even though most of the elected members of the said Zilla Panchayat belonged to Scheduled Caste community and the post of President was supposed to have been reserved for Scheduled Caste category as per the rotation rule or criteria of population ratio prescribed in the Rules, but that was arbitrarily changed to Scheduled Tribe (Woman) category. The relevant Rules 3 to 5 of 2005 Rules are quoted below:

3. Reservation of offices of Adhyaksha and Upadhyaksha.(1) Reservation of offices of Adhyaksha and Upadhyaksha of Zilla Panchayats in the State for different categories in accordance with subsection (2) of section 177 shall be specified in the table below:

Sl.No Category Adhyaksha Upadhyaksha

Total Women Total Women

1 Scheduled Castes 6 3 6 3

2 Scheduled Tribes 3 2 3 2

3 Backward Classes:

(a) Category – A 5 2 5 2

(b) Category – B 1 1 1 1

4 Unreserved 15 7 15 7

Total 30 15 30 15

4. Rotation of Offices.(a) The offices of Adhyaksha and Upadhyaksha reserved for Scheduled Tribes shall be allotted to the Zilla Panchayats having the highest percentage of population belonging to the Scheduled Tribes with reference to the total population of the district. The same procedure shall be followed for allotting Zilla Panchayats for the same number of Offices of Upadhyaksha for members belonging to Scheduled Tribes but excluding the Zilla Panchayats in which the offices of Adhyaksha have been already allotted to them.

(b) The offices of Adhyaksha and Upadhyaksha of Zilla Panchayats in the State shall be allotted for members belonging to the Scheduled Caste