Panaji, Seeking to clear the way for political reservation for Scheduled Tribes ahead of the 2027 assembly polls, the Goa government is set to move the Supreme Court this week, challenging a Bombay High Court order that stalled the identification of tribal population figures, officials said on Tuesday.
The Panaji bench of the High Court had last week restrained the Census Commissioner from notifying ST population estimates, observing that such figures could not be determined on any basis other than the first official Census conducted after 2026. A division bench comprising Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit S Jamsandekar had ordered the interim stay while hearing a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes in Assembly Constituencies of the State of Goa Act, 2025. The court questioned the Census Commissioner’s decision to presume that the ST population constituted 9.9 per cent of Goa’s total population based on the 2001 Census, despite acknowledging that available data did not permit an accurate assessment of the current population. The High Court’s interim order has created uncertainty over the proposed reservation of four assembly constituencies for the ST community ahead of the 2027 polls.
Talking to PTI, Goa NRI Commissioner Narendra Sawaikar, who was part of a state delegation that visited New Delhi, said the government would seek a vacation of the stay and file a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court by Wednesday.
