The reservation of Chairperson posts in Municipalities is governed by the provisions of Section 43 of the Rajasthan Municipalities Act, 2009, and the rotation system is not specifically mandated under Article 243T(4) of the Constitution of India.

JUDGMENT :

(Through Video Conferencing)

1. Vide this order above mentioned petitions would be disposed of as the controversy involved in all the cases is the same.

2. Petitioners have filed the petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India challenging the notification dated 20.10.2019. In some of the petitions vires of subsequent notification dated 13.10.2020 has also been challenged. The controversy involved in the petitions relates to reservation of seats for the post of Chairpersons of various Municipalities in the State.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioners have submitted that the post of Chairperson on the basis of reservation of various Municipalities should be filled up by way of rotation. Learned counsel have submitted that as per Article 243T(6) of the Constitution of India, nothing shall prevent the legislature of a State from making any provision for reservation of seats in any Municipality or offices of Chairpersons in the Municipalities. As per Clause (4) of the said provision, the offices of Chairpersons in the Municipalities shall be reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and women in such manner as the legislature of a State may, by law, provide. As per Section 43 of the Rajasthan Municipalities Act, 2009 (hereinafter referred to as 'the Act'), it was provided that the Municipalities in which office is reserved for Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes shall be distributed throughout the State and located as far as practicable in those areas where the proportion of their population to the total population is comparatively large. In-fact, the post of Chairpersons on the basis of reservation were liable to be filled in on the basis of rotation so that every constituency gets a chance for the post of Chairperson on the basis of reservation. The State was not following the procedure of declaring the posts on the basis of reservation of Chairperson by way of rotation. Instead, only few constituencies had been selected and were being given reservation. As per notification dated 30.10.1999 (Annexure-5 in D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 12682/2020) procedure had been provided for allotting the reserved posts of Chairman, Municipalities. The said notification had been withdrawn with retrospective effect vide notification dated 13.10.2020 (Annexure-15 in D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 12682/2020) during pendency of petitions. In the reply filed by the State in D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 19859/2020, it had been submitted that reservation of Chairperson after implementation of rotation policy in accordance with Article 243T of the Constitution of India, was being followed. It was further replied that reservation to the seat of Chairperson was made after following rotation policy through lottery/draw system in consonance with Article 243 of the Constitution of India. Although, under Article 243T(4) of the Constitution of India it had not been specifically provided that rotation system was to be followed, but the same was being followed in other States/Union Territories, i.e., Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Tripura, Jharkhand and Goa. It was discriminatory that reserved category candidates were not getting chance to become Chairperson of general category candidates area.

4. In support of their arguments, learned counsels for the appellants have placed reliance on the decision of Hon'ble Supreme Court in Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) v. Secretary, Governor's Secretariat & Ors.,: (2020) 6 SCC 548, wherein it has been held as under:-

"6. As is apparent from the above extract, there is a pointed reference to this Court's order dated 17-7-2019 in C.R. Jayasukin v. T.N. State Election Commission. This Order was delivered in M.A. No. 2328 of 2019 which was filed by the State Election Commission and reads as under: (scc OnLine SC paras 1-4)

"1. On 2-7-2019 C.R. Jayasukin v. T.N. State Election Commission, this Court had passed the following