The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking directions to the Union government to conduct the delimitation process in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, reported Live Law.

Delimitation is the process of redrawing the territorial boundaries of electoral constituencies.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh rejected the petitioner’s argument that holding the exercise only in Jammu and Kashmir last year and not in the southern states was “arbitrary or violative of the Constitution”, according to Bar and Bench.

The Union government had started the delimitation process of Assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir in February 2020. In May 2022, the number of elected Assembly seats in the Union Territory was increased from 83 to 90 in the final delimitation order. Of the seven new seats, one was given to Kashmir, taking its total to 46, and six were given to Jammu, which now has 43 seats.

K Purushottam Reddy, a professor, had approached the Supreme Court stating that excluding Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from the exercise “created an unreasonable classification and was therefore unconstitutional”, reported Live Law.

Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in 2014 to create Telangana. The Assembly of the undivided state had 294 seats. After the bifurcation, the Assembly in Andhra Pradesh was allocated 175 seats and Telangana 119.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court stated that allowing the delimitation process in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana “will open floodgates for all states to approach seeking parity”.

The bench also said that the provisions dealing with delimitation in states were different from Union Territories.

“Union Territories are regulated by parliamentary legislation,” the bench added.