1. This petition filed in the nature of public interest litigation raises challenge to the manner in which the respondents-the State Government as well as the State Election Commission have decided to conduct election of Councilors to different Municipal Corporations in the State of Gujarat. Sole objection of the petitioner is that when the local area of Municipal Corporation is divided into different wards, each ward must have one Councilor and policy of having multi-member wards (three number in present case) is constitutionally invalid.

2. Briefly stated, facts are as follows :

2.1 Undisputedly in six Municipal Corporations situated in the State of Gujarat namely, Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar and Vadodara, term of elected bodies of the Corporations would be over in October December 2010 and the elections for the new Corporations therefore, would be held shortly to elect new bodies of the Corporations. For such a purpose, the State Election Commission has already undertaken task of delimitation by issuing notification on 29.1.2010. The election programme is not yet announced. For holding such elections, State Government has issued notifications determining the number of wards and the number of Councilors in the different Municipal Corporations as also providing for reservation of seats in favour of different reserved categories. By way of example, we have on record one such notification dated 7.5.2010 filed along with the affidavit dated 11.6.2010 at Annexure-G which reads as follows : NOW, THEREFORE, in exercise of the powers conferred by sub clause(a) of clause(iii) of sub-section (3) of section 5 read with sub-sections(4), (5), (6) and (7) of the said section 5 of the said Act so far as the City of Surat is concerned, the Government of Gujarat hereby determines that.-(1) the City of Surat shall be divided into Thirty-eight Wards having one Hundred Fourteen Councilors and the Municipal Corporation of Surat shall consist of One Hundred Fourteen elected Councilors.(2) out of the One Hundred Fourteen seats of councilors;-(i) Four seats shall be reserved for persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes out of which One seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes.(ii) Four seats shall be reserved for persons belonging to the Scheduled Tribes out of which One seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Tribes;(iii) Eleven seats shall be reserved for the persons belonging to the Backward Classes out of which Four seats shall be reserved for women belonging to Backward Classes;(iv) Thirty-eight seats shall be reserved for the women (including the number of seats reserved for the women belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes referred to as above.)

2.2 It is primarily the case of the petitioner that provision for electing three Councilors from each ward is unconstitutional and even otherwise legally impermissible. In the original form, entire thrust of the petitioner's challenge was that above formula of three Councilors representing one ward is violative of democratic principle of one man one vote . The petitioner contended that by virtue of Constitutional amendment and addition of various provisions made for conduct of elections to different local bodies of self-governance and in particular by addition of Article 243R in the Constitution, elections to Municipalities have to be held in the same manner as elections to State Legislative Assembly. The petitioner has therefore, contended in the petition that :

...It is stated that as already provided by Article 243R, seats in a Municipality have to be filled up by persons chosen by direct elections from territorial constituencies. These territorial constituencies although are constituencies in their nature equivalent to the constituencies as bifurcated in a Vidhansabha or in a Legislative Assembly, however, constituencies in a municipal area are known as Wards. Thus, only nomenclature of the c