JUDGMENT :

Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, J.

Prologue

1.1 It is inclusion not exclusion, equality not inequality and democracy not executive fiat that runs as a common thread throughout our Constitution. In a society as diverse as ours it has been the endeavour of our Constitutional Courts to further strengthen this thread.

With this percept in mind, we proceed to consider the issues posed before us in this batch of petitions which raise similar questions of fact and law and hence are being decided by this common judgment which follows:

1.2 Some of these petitions have been filed as Public Interest Litigation and some of them raise the alleged personal grievance arising out of a notification dated 5.12.2022 issued by the State Government in the Department of Urban Development which is a draft order in terms of Section 9-A (5)(3) of Uttar Pradesh Municipalities Act, 1916 (hereinafter referred to as 'Municipalities Act') inviting objections to the proposed determination of number of offices of the Chairpersons of different Municipal Bodies to be reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and Women. Challenge, however, is confined to the proposed determination for