In Brief
Two municipal election candidates from Mumbai contested reserved seats for backward classes. The Caste Scrutiny Committee rejected their caste claims, but before the statutory six-month deadline expired, both candidates filed writ petitions. The High Court granted interim orders protecting their continued office and eventually allowed the petitions, setting aside the rejection orders. The Supreme Court upheld this decision, holding that Article 226 jurisdiction to grant judicial review cannot be curtailed by state statutes. The Court ruled that the High Court could issue interim orders interdicting the automatic legal fiction (automatic termination) in the statute, since it did so before the fiction came into operation and the candidates' caste claims were illegally rejected by the Scrutiny Committee.
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