Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy along with a slew of state Congress leaders, including ministers and party MLAs, held a protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi Wednesday to demand Presidential assent to the Bills passed by the Telangana Legislature giving 42% reservation to the Backward Classes (BCs) in the state.
Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also joined the protest.
How were these Bills passed?
The Revanth Reddy-led Telangana government, in line with its pre-poll promise made in the Kamareddy Declaration to enhance BC reservation, conducted a Socio, Educational, Employment, Economic, and Political Caste (SEEEPC) survey or caste survey in November last year.
In light with the survey’s findings, the Congress government started the process of enhancing reservations for BCs in government jobs, education and local bodies from the existing 23% to 42%. It also constituted a panel under retired bureaucrat Busani Venkateswara Rao to study the data of the caste survey and mandated it to submit a report within a month. The report, which is yet to be made public, recommended 42% reservation for BCs in the state.
In March, the Reddy government passed two Bills – The Telangana Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (reservation of seats in educational institutions and of appointments or posts in services under the State) Bill 2025 and The Telangana Backward Classes (Reservation of seats in Rural and Urban Local Bodies) Bill 2025 – in the Assembly as well as the Legislative Council.
The Bills were then sent to Telangana Governor Jishnu Dev Varma for his assent. Varma forwarded the Bills to President Droupadi Murmu for her assent on March 30.
The Reddy dispensation also formed an independent working group headed by retired judge, Justice Sudarshan Reddy, for a review of the caste survey, which recently submitted its report to the government.
Last month, the government promulgated an ordinance to provide for 42% quota for BCs in local bodies and sent it to Governor Varma for his approval. The Governor again sent the ordinance to the President for her assent.
Why did Reddy govt take these steps?
With the proposed quotas set to breach the Supreme Court-mandated 50% ceiling, the Telangana government needs to ensure that its move would fulfil the “triple test” stipulated by the top court.
“We want to ensure that if the move is challenged in court, which in all likelihood this would be, it does not get entangled in a legal hurdle. Hence, we have made sure that the caste survey is scientific and also made sure that experts studied the data to give empirical credence for 42% reservation to BCs,” a senior Congress leader said.
What are the caste survey’s findings?
According to the caste survey, Telangana has 1,15,71,457 households and the population is 3,55,50,759. Of this, the Scheduled Caste (SC)’s population is 61,91,294 (17.42%), Scheduled Tribe (ST) 37,08,408 (10.43%), BCs 2,00,37,668 (56.36%), while other castes number 56,13,389 (15.89%).
Why Telangana Cong brass have hit Delhi streets?
The Congress government has found itself in a tricky situation as it had promised to implement the proposed reservations in the local body elections. However, with the Telangana High Court directing it to hold and complete the rural local body polls by September 30, the Congress is racing against time to implement the enhanced quotas.
A Congress leader said they would do “everything in their power” to ensure that the local body polls are held with the new reservation system in place. “If we need to knock Delhi’s doors, we will do it everyday. We will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that the BC quota sees the light of day,” he said.
What is Telangana Oppn’s stance?
While the BRS has been in favour of reservations, it claims that the approach adopted by the Congress government was “not sincere”. Terming the Congress’s Jantar Mantar dharna as an “attempt to camouflage its failures”, BRS MLC Dasoju Sravan told The Indian Express that the Reddy government should have approached the Supreme Court with empirical data to implement the reservations. “They should have held a dialogue with other parties while Rahul Gandhi could have led an all-party delegation seeking its implementation,” he said.
Sravan also slammed the Congress government for promulgating an ordinance on the matter. “What was the point of the ordinance when Bills are already with the President. It is constitutionally not valid and was also unwanted,” he said.
BRS MLC K Kavitha, who on Tuesday was forced to call off her 72-hour hunger strike over the issue after the Telangana High Court denied permission, has pressed for the implementation of the quota and also sought a separate reservation for Muslims.
The BJP has called the Reddy government’s efforts to implement the quota “insincere” and has opposed the proposal to include Muslims in the BC category.
While Telangana BJP president N Ramachander Rao urged CM Reddy to pass a Government Order (GO) on the issue, a state BJP leader said that including Muslims in the quota would amount to granting religion-based reservations.
As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the Reddy government is considering a proposal to streamline the quota benefits for 14 backward Muslim groups, which include about 3 lakh Shia families, under the Backward Classes (BC) reservation regime. The caste survey found that Muslims account for 12.58% of the state’s population, down from the 12.69 recorded in the 2011 Census.
How the quota issue could play out?
The Reddy government, which has been hit by various controversies like the Kancha Gachibowli row and farmer suicides, is hoping to bolster its prospects with the quota move. “The local body polls are like a mid-term referendum of our tenure. A good showing will cement our position in the state. By fulfilling pre-poll promises, we want to tell the people that we walk the talk,” a state Congress leader said.
Considering the findings of the survey, BCs are likely to exert pressure for more representation in the local body polls. Currently, the Reddy Cabinet has only three ministers from the BC communities – Vakiti Srihari, Ponnam Prabhakar and Konda Surekha.
The BRS, however, feels that the Congress’s play would have no bearing on the polls as the Reddy government has “failed the people”. “In the last polls, we won almost 50% of the seats and not just local body elections, if Assembly elections are held today, we will definitely win more than 80% of the seats as the people are aware of the state government’s failures,” Sravan claimed.