New Delhi: Accepting an exception to Jammu and Kashmir, the Supreme Court said on Friday that delimitation practice cannot be done for other states before the publication of the first census data after 2026 as it would be against the mandate of Article 170 (3) of the Constitution.A bench of Justice Surya Kant and NK Singh said, “The delimitation process is a legislative and executive work. If SC is forced to be taken out of delimitation practice (in a particular state) through judicial fiat, it would probably be considered as an intervention in the policy-making privilege of the executive,” Justice Surya Kant and NK Singh said a bench.Writing a decision for the bench, Justice Kant said, “Constitutional editing balances institutional roles carefully, and any disintegration of that balance will reduce both validity and functional integrity of the democratic process.”The bench said that the constitutional mandate under Article 170 (3) gives any delimitation to any delimitation practice related to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana or any other state states. This dismissed a writ petition, which challenges the Center’s decision to delimit only for J&K, not for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the constitutional mandate on the basis of the first census after 2026, the delimitation – delimitation practice – does not apply to the UTS. The petitioner’s counsel Rao Ranjit said that although the J&K Reorganization Act was passed in 2019, delimitation practice was carried out under the 2020 notification, even though the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act was passed in 2014, the delimitation was not done for these two states even after a decade.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, along with ASG KM Nataraj for the Center, said that according to the 80 and 170 article of the Constitution, the relevant data of the first census held after 2026 can not be re -constructed in regional constituencies till then. For the Election Commission, senior advocate Maninder Singh said that the EC has no jurisdiction to focus on the validity of delimitation practice as its role is only to facilitate the implementation of the process. The SC accepted the stand of the Center and said that the AP Reorganization Act is subject to constitutional provisions, as is clearly provided in the Act. If delimitation exercise is allowed in some states, it will open a flood gate of equal demands from other states, they said. The bench said that the petitioner could not try to attract delimitation equality with the Center area of Jammu and Kashmir between AP and Telangana states, with no application of Article 170 (3). Although it accepted the legitimate expectations of the people of both states for delimitation practice, it ruled that such expectations could not override the constitutional mandate.
