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Parmar Samantsinh Umedsinh & Ors. v. State of Gujarat & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2021 INSC 115Decided 24 Feb 2021
Civil Appeal No. 706 of 2021
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice R. Subhash Reddy · Justice M.R. Shah

Background

The appellants challenged Gujarat's municipal election laws, Section 5(3)(iii)(a) and Section 29A of the Gujarat Provincial Municipal Corporation Act, 1949, and related delimitation rules, arguing that these provisions allowed more than one elected member per ward, which they said violated the "one member, one ward" principle they read into Articles 243R and 243S of the Constitution. The Gujarat High Court had dismissed their writ petition, following its own earlier ruling upholding the same scheme, so the appellants came to the Supreme Court. A connected appeal by the State Election Commission challenged a separate High Court ruling that had struck down an ordinance postponing local body elections, and a related writ petition raised the same "one member one ward" question.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that neither Article 243R nor Article 243S of the Constitution contains any requirement limiting a ward to a single elected member: the State Legislature, acting under Entry 5 of List II (State List), has the competence to provide for multi-member wards, and doing so does not undermine reservation or empowerment of women, Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, since reservation under Article 243T operates seat-wise rather than ward-wise. The Court also rejected the argument that a notification dated 04.12.2014 was issued prematurely in violation of an earlier draft-rules objection period, finding that notification dealt with an entirely separate subject. Finding no constitutional infirmity, the Court dismissed this appeal and the connected writ petition as without merit; the separate appeal by the State Election Commission was dismissed as having become infructuous since the directed elections had already been held.

Lesson Learnt

State legislatures have wide constitutional latitude to design the composition of municipal wards (including multi-member wards), so long as reservation safeguards for weaker sections are honoured in substance: the Constitution does not mandate a rigid "one member per ward" formula for local bodies.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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