MUMBAI, Dec. 2 -- Over a 100 petitions have been filed in the Bombay High Court against the state government's recent delimitation exercise and its method of rotating reserved seats in local bodies. Petitioners say the state's approach goes against constitutional principles of local autonomy. The court will hear the matter today. The petitions, filed by elected representatives, former councillors and voters from several districts, claimed that the state has violated the constitutional principle of local-body governance by changing the ongoing rotation cycle for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) seats. In Maharashtra, reservation for SC, ST and Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections has historically followed a rotation model introduced in the 1996 Rules. The rotation method was adopted to ensure that different communities had opportunities to be represented over time, as a ward reserved for one group in one election would be open or reserved for a different group in the next. Rule 4 of those 1996 rules ensures that any group that received reservation in one cycle would not retain it in the next. The controversy arose when the state government notified new rules in 2025, introducing Rule 12, which treats the upcoming election as the "first election", as first reported by HT in October. Petitioners at the high court argued that Rule 12 effectively resets the reservation cycle and disregards the rotation that has been followed since 1996. The petitioners argued SC and ST seats are only midway through their term. Starting the upcoming elections as the "first election" under Rule 12 would defeat the purpose of rotating reserved seats fairly across wards. The state also told the court that the recent restructuring of the boundaries of rural local bodies made a fresh delimitation exercise unavoidable, this naturally affected the number of councillors and made it necessary to re-allocate reserved seats in wards. The issue has become more urgent after the SEC suspended elections in at least 20 municipal councils and panchayats, because of widespread mistakes in the nomination and symbol allotment process....