Newdelhi, Oct 15, 2026: The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a legal challenge targeting the delimitation of Assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh's Ambedkar Nagar district, specifically focusing on the reservation of the Alapur seat for Scheduled Castes.
A division bench comprised of Justice Shekhar B Saraf and Justice Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary delivered the ruling, concluding that the petition was excessively delayed and failed to prove any breach of constitutional mandates. The judges emphasized that the disputed delimitation order, initially issued in December 2006, had long since acquired the full force of law and could not be overturned simply through the petitioner's localized calculations regarding population and caste demographics.
The lawsuit had been brought forward by Dileep Kumar, a local resident and registered voter in Ambedkar Nagar, who requested a comprehensive revision of both the district's constituency delimitation and its seat reservations. Kumar argued before the bench that population figures varied significantly across the five local constituencies of Katehari, Tanda, Alapur, Jalalpur, and Akbarpur, which he claimed breached Article 170(2) of the Indian Constitution. Pointing to specific discrepancies, the petitioner noted that Jalalpur held a population of 460,245 compared to Akbarpur's 368,722.
Furthermore, the petitioner contended that the territorial allocation of areas had improperly influenced the reservation status of Alapur, asserting that its current percentage of Scheduled Caste residents did not warrant keeping it as a reserved constituency.
In addressing these contentions, the bench clarified that Article 170(2) mandates population and seat parity strictly "so far as practicable," granting the Delimitation Commission necessary discretion to factor in geographic continuity, administrative boundaries, and other practical considerations. The court further pointed out that internal guidelines allowing a 10 percent population deviation margin from the average do not function as rigid legal requirements that create enforceable absolute rights.
Judicial review of delimitation orders remains strictly constrained, the court noted, limited to situations involving legislative incompetence or direct violations of fundamental rights and constitutional provisions. The bench found that the petitioner had successfully established neither ground.
Highlighting the passage of nearly twenty years since the original order, during which multiple Assembly elections had been successfully conducted under the same framework, the court stressed that undoing the arrangement now would be deeply inequitable. This is especially true given that the upcoming completion of the 2026 Census could soon trigger a brand new delimitation process altogether. Consequently, the High Court firmly declined to alter the longstanding delimitation and reservation structure.