The Telangana government on Sunday passed two bills to lift the 50% ceiling on caste-based reservations in local bodies, reported The Hindu. The move has paved the way for 42% reservations to Backward Classes in local body polls.
The 2025 Telangana Municipalities Third Amendment Bill and the 2025 Telangana Panchayat Raj Third Amendment Act were passed by the Assembly amid questions by the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
This lifted the 50% ceiling on reservations set by the Supreme Court in 1992, bringing the total quotas for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and Bakcward Classes in Telangana to 67%.
The draft legislations on Sunday came at a time when two other bills passed in March on increasing reservations for education, government jobs and local bodies have been awaiting the president’s assent.
In the Assembly on Sunday, the ruling Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi blamed each other for the enhanced reservation for Backward Classes not being implemented, The News Minute reported.
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that the Telangana High Court had directed that elections for local bodies should be held before September 30, PTI reported. He said that the Congress government was determined to go to the polls only after implementing the 42% quota to Backward Classes.
Reddy also criticised the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi government in the state for “slashing” the Backward Classes reservation to bring the overall quotas under the 50% cap, The News Minute reported.
He also questioned the Opposition party for not supporting the sit-in protest conducted by the state government in New Delhi in August to demand that the Union government approve the two other Backward Classes reservation bills pending before the president.
On the other hand, Bharat Rashtra Samithi Gangula Kamalakar alleged that the state government was not sincere about the Backward Classes reservation, The News Minute reported.
He also asked why the state government did not take an all-party delegation to New Delhi to demand presidential approval for the two bills passed in March.
The Telangana government’s caste survey published in February found that Backward Classes constitute 56.3% of the population in the state. This includes Muslim caste groups.
The population of Backward Classes in absolute numbers was 1.9 crore.
As per the door-to-door household survey conducted in November and December, Scheduled Castes comprise 17.4%, or 61.8 lakh, of the population and Scheduled Tribes accounted for 10.4%, or 37 lakh. Other castes made up 15.7% of the population.
Muslims made up about 12.5%, or 44.5 lakh, of the population. Of this, Backward Classes Muslims accounted for 10%, or 35.7 lakh, and Other Classes of Muslims accounted for 2.4%, or 8.8 lakh.
In February 2024, a resolution was passed in the Assembly on the caste survey, after which it was undertaken by the state planning department.
The caste survey was one of the promises made by the Congress in Telangana ahead of the Assembly elections in 2023. The party won the elections, defeating the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
With the release of the report, Telangana became the third state to carry out such a survey after Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
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