The Constitution of the Indian Union establishes the reservation of the number of seats for certain castes and tribes, apart from a special clause for the Anglo-Indian community. The constitutional text envisages the following, under the title "SPECIAL PROVISIONS RELATING TO CERTAIN CLASSES":
"330.Reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the House of the People. (1) Seats shall be reserved in the House of the People for - (a) the Scheduled Castes; (b) the Scheduled Tribes in the autonomous districts of Assam. (2) The number of seats reserved in any State for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes under clause(1) shall bear, as nearly as may be, the same proportion to the total number of seats allotted to that State in the House of the Peoples, in respect of which seats are so reserved, bears to the total population of the State. 331.Representation of the Anglo-Indian community in the House of the People. - Notwithstanding anything in article 81, the President may, if he is of opinion that the Anglo-Indian community is not adequately represented in the House of the People, nominate not more than two members of that community to the House of the People."
This is a mechanism of positive discrimination, insofar as it protects the election of candidates of certain groups to ensure their representation. We have already made reference to the legal problems these mechanisms pose: insofar as they give priority to particular candidates for belonging to a group, they apply a criterion opposed to "one person, one vote", to the equal value of each vote. Therefore, even though the need for these can be justified in contexts where representation helps overcome serious cases of inequality, the effects on the groups that do not receive such special treatment, should be assessed. Thus it is reasonable for provision to be made for the number of positions reserved to be in some proportion to the population of the constituency
