logo
Legally protect Telangana govt ordinance on 42% quota, says BC netas to CM Revanth Reddy

Legally protect Telangana govt ordinance on 42% quota, says BC netas to CM Revanth Reddy

Time of India12-07-2025
HYDERABAD: The state govt is likely to file caveats in the Telangana high court and
Supreme Court
to protect the proposed ordinance extending 42% reservations to BCs in local bodies after taking legal experts' opinion.
Leaders of various BC welfare associations on Friday met chief minister A Revanth Reddy and urged to take all legal precautions to protect the ordinance.
The delegation led by National BC Welfare Association president R Krishnaiah, who is also a BJP MP (Rajya Sabha), thanked the CM for what they termed a historic decision and a major step towards political empowerment of the BCs. R Krishnaiah told TOI: "The CM responded positively and asked all the BC leaders also to be alert.
He assured us that the govt is committed to BC welfare and 42% quota, and it will fight on all fronts if the situation arises.
"
While welcoming the state cabinet's decision, various BC association leaders also sought to warn that the entire community will launch an agitation and see the end of the political career of any individual or party if they went to court against 42% reservations to the BCs.
You Can Also Check:
Hyderabad AQI
|
Weather in Hyderabad
|
Bank Holidays in Hyderabad
|
Public Holidays in Hyderabad
"We will have no option but to come onto the roads against the 10% EWS reservations and demand its withdrawal if anyone from the upper caste is found to be behind filing a case against the BC quota," warned BC leader Jajula Srinivas Goud during a media conference on Friday.
He said the only permanent solution was for the central govt to amend the Constitution and include BC reservations enhancement in the IX Schedule.
"The central govt has disappointed the BCs as it sat on the BC Bills sent by the govt for almost three months. With no other option, the Congress govt decided to come out with an ordinance. Our appeal to all the political parties is to support the 42% quota to BCs. Anyone opposing the BC quota will be branded as anti-BC," he said.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

August 15, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Punjab Accord
August 15, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Punjab Accord

Indian Express

time24 minutes ago

  • Indian Express

August 15, 1985, Forty Years Ago: Punjab Accord

President Zail Singh hailed the recent Punjab accord as 'a victory of the democratic process' and hoped that it would bring peace, stability, and progress in the state. The President said the memorandum of settlement had been possible thanks to the statesmanship of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Assam Talks Stalled Persisting differences over the cut-off year for determination of foreign nationals appeared to have held up agreement between the government and the Assam agitation leaders. The government was reportedly pressing for acceptance of 1971 as the cut-off year and the agitators demanded that it be 1966. Hardliner movement leaders had reservations about Hiteswar Saikia as the caretaker CM. Haryana Mlas Resign Deviating from their earlier decision to resign en masse from the Haryana Vidhan Sabha in protest against the Centre-Akali Dal accord, the Opposition in Haryana restricted itself to the submission of resignations of three key leaders — Devi Lal, former chief minister, Mangal Sein, leader of the BJP group, and Nihal Singh, leader of the Congress (J) in the Vidhan Sabha. The Speaker refused to comment. I-Day Security Slip-Up THE DELHI POLICE made a major security blunder in the dress rehearsal of the Independence Day ceremony, when they failed to stop an unauthorised man from entering the VVIP enclosure and making his way to the podium where the PM will unfurl the flag on August 15. None of the policemen were able to explain to senior officials who the man was, how he got in, and what he was doing.

Best of Both Sides: SC order on stray dogs overlooks that compassion is what makes a city a home
Best of Both Sides: SC order on stray dogs overlooks that compassion is what makes a city a home

Indian Express

time24 minutes ago

  • Indian Express

Best of Both Sides: SC order on stray dogs overlooks that compassion is what makes a city a home

A month ago, I carried five tiny kittens home from the street. They were stranded in a house about to be demolished, shivering, hungry, and still too young to eat on their own. Today, they are healthy, curious, and very sure they own my home. It is astonishing how quickly an animal can change when it is given care. This week's Supreme Court order that every street dog in Delhi be relocated to a shelter within eight weeks is, at its heart, about care — or rather, the lack of it. Yes, the threat of rabies is real. Yes, we need solutions to incidents of aggression and population growth. But there is a difference between solving a problem and sweeping it out of sight. Even if the order were legally sound, the reality on the ground makes it impossible to execute. To begin with, we don't know exactly how many dogs there are in Delhi. There hasn't been a count in 10 years. The 'estimate' offered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is around 8 lakh. Against those numbers, Delhi has just 20 temporary shelters, none of them government-run. Building and running enough facilities to house every dog would cost crores. We struggle to build bridges for decades, yet we are expected to build and staff thousands of shelters in two months. Ironically, the same MCD that has already failed to meet sterilisation targets and hasn't supplied anti-rabies vaccines in the numbers needed is now being tasked with the creation of humane shelters. Not once has the Court asked the civic body for accountability. But the most important reason to doubt the effectiveness of this order is neither legal nor logistical, it's logical. Mass removal simply doesn't work. We know this from Turkey, where a similar programme descended into mass culling, only for the stray population to rebound. The sterilise-vaccinate-return approach, enshrined in Indian law, exists because it works. Remove the dogs who already have a place, and you create space for new ones who don't. If the intent is to curb rabies cases in Delhi, then this order does more harm than good. To start with, panic fanned by WhatsApp messages declares that 2,000 people die of rabies every day in the national capital. Yet, the government's own figures — given in a reply to a question in the Lok Sabha just months ago — tell a very different story. According to official data, in 2024, there were 54 'suspected human rabies deaths' in the entire country — none from Delhi. The root cause of death by rabies is the shortage of rabies vaccines at government hospitals. Sending every single stray to a shelter cannot be a one-stop solution to India's rabies crisis. Look at Romania, where, after shelters were filled and streets emptied, unsterilised and unvaccinated dogs moved into the emptied territories. Beyond the failures of policy and denial of science, though, there is something more troubling: The absence of care. Article 51A(g) of our Constitution, which asks us to show compassion to all living creatures, is meant to shape how we live and the principles we live by. The persistent caricature of those who oppose this verdict is the elite South Delhi aunty, feeding pedigreed dogs in her gated colony. In truth, most community dogs live in less privileged neighbourhoods, sustained by families who cannot keep them inside their small homes but still take responsibility for them. I think of a friend who found a dog abandoned outside his home. He took the dog in, not into his house but into his life. Neighbours feed him. Someone else covers the cost of vaccinations. In winter, children in the lane make sure he has a blanket. This is what a community of care looks like: Fragile, improvised, but deeply human. The real cause of Delhi's stray population is abandonment. What happens when the dog bought for a child's birthday is dumped a year later? When he mates with another discarded pet, producing a litter born into homelessness? The owners face no penalty. But the puppies will be rounded up, sent to overcrowded shelters, where they will disappear. Even if Delhi somehow found the space and money overnight, removing sterilised, vaccinated dogs from their territories will undo years of rabies control and leave the streets more unsafe. The alternative is not a mystery. It is in our laws already: Large-scale sterilisation and vaccination, strict enforcement against illegal breeding and abandonment, public education on responsible pet ownership, and support for communities that care for animals where they are. The Supreme Court may have, in all its wisdom, passed the order that it has. Yet, the Chief Minister still has the chance to step in and stop an unworkable, unlawful order from taking effect — and to choose care over cruelty disguised as efficiency. Inhumanity is easy. It is also a sign of our times. But care — for each other, for the animals who live alongside us — is what makes a city worth calling home. The writer is national spokesperson, NCP (SP)

Suhas Palshikar writes: This I-Day, let's enliven the idea of a critical citizen
Suhas Palshikar writes: This I-Day, let's enliven the idea of a critical citizen

Indian Express

time24 minutes ago

  • Indian Express

Suhas Palshikar writes: This I-Day, let's enliven the idea of a critical citizen

What does a country's freedom mean? The elementary meaning of freedom for a society is an independent political existence that can withstand external pressures in the contemporary global context. As India celebrates another Independence Day, it faces an awkward situation. Just a few months ago, India was made proud by the skill of its armed forces, leading to an impression that military capability alone is a sine qua non and guarantor of a country's freedom in this primary sense. The lukewarm global response to India's stand on Pakistan alerted it to the limitations of mere military capability. Following that, India is staring at the current moment of imperialism (see 'Against imperialism' by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, IE, August 5). The US stance is not merely about tariffs but also about India's choices of doing trade with other countries. While the US is the current villain, let us not forget that China, as much as the US, is an actor constricting India's freedom in the global state system. These two actors have shown that, beyond military capabilities, it is the economy that matters in sustaining freedom in this first sense. Two, any discussion of freedom must examine the realm of civic freedom. Even as India keeps struggling against international pressures — partly through posturing and partly through negotiations — the question of freedom must take into account the institutionally approved space for freedom of its citizens. What is a country, after all, without its citizens? So, as much as the country's manoeuvrability in the global context, the freedom that its citizens are supposed to have matters in any discussion of the country's freedom. And if that freedom is found to be weak, there are no easy villains out there, such as enemy countries or friends-turned-foes. We must look within, both for finding out how free we are and what obstructs that freedom. Constitutional experts have laboured on this theme and debated if the Constitution is a grammar of freedoms or a grammar of state power. That rich debate is useful, but beyond that, the realm of civic freedoms can be assessed more in the context of the ethic of approbation that permeates thinking among power-holders. Holders of power expect that the only correct interpretation of the constitutional scope of civic freedoms is the one based on the idea that the regime and its minions are entitled to loyalty from citizens. This idea is increasingly being written into the laws and read in the laws by courts. There is a well-deserved disappointment when a judge lays out what the Opposition leader should not do. But we ignore that it is the routine norm of adjudication in a majority of cases involving freedom of expression and it is also a more accepted approach to freedoms among politicians and increasingly among media persons. That norm implicitly upholds the idea of an ideal citizen — docile, in awe of the state, paying obeisance to authority, trusting the paternal intentions of power-holders. In this normative approach, the legislature, executive, bureaucracy and judiciary are often in agreement. It hides behind the idea that authority is bona fide and that criticism, opposition, protests, must therefore operate within the framework of approbation. This agreement is far more significant than the constitutional design that installs a (limited) framework of civic freedoms. The third realm of freedom consists of a collective morality that informs the idea of freedom. Historically, Indian society has been weak on this count because of the compulsions of intra-group monitoring by caste and religious groups. Even amid these limiting circumstances, the autonomy of individual citizens in the face of social or collective force is further weakening in contemporary times. Instead of jealously guarding our freedoms, the popular view is that freedom is to be willy-nilly tolerated. Current political processes keep inventing alibis for limiting freedoms and in turn, people believe in those alibis. The ethic of approbation plays a critical role in a restrictive space for freedom. The official discourse about the good citizen or a true Indian not only weighs upon citizens; it also unleashes social processes of surveillance, browbeating and name-calling. The past decade has seen these processes becoming stronger not merely because the ruling party supports them but also because the governmental machinery actively encourages citizens to be docile and uncritical and the judiciary has failed to function as a counterbalancing force. The fact that courts decide which cause is worthy of a protest march is hardly even commented upon. These processes discouraging freedom and the concomitant diversity of ideas and practices are becoming all-pervasive. As the ruling party continues to be electorally acceptable, the erosion of critical spaces manifests itself in a variety of ways. In the field of competitive politics, in spite of apparently bitter competition, there is seldom any challenge to the ethic of approbation or to the idea of a patronising authority. Once the BJP has successfully installed the template for a harsh anti-freedom state, Opposition parties, fearful of alienating the median voter, shy away from strengthening the ideas of difference and dissent. Harsh laws and arbitrary arrests are weapons all governments use enthusiastically — thus jeopardising the idea of a citizenry that would be able to criticise and protest. Thus, a culture of conformity forms the basis of competitive politics. The overall political culture, too, tends to adopt conformity with dominant ideas as its main feature. No wonder, the so-called elites — from industry, arts, media and academia — have chosen the path of self-censorship. They either become cheerleaders of the regime of unfreedom or choose silence. Conformity and silence mark elite responses to the crisis of freedom because they are confronted with the dual threats of government coercion and the free play of vigilante action. The former can at least, in principle, be challenged in court, but the latter is literally a law unto itself. These two threats constitute the basis for the prevailing social atmosphere of circumspection and compromise. It is not easy to expect ordinary citizens to engage in a critical examination of power in this atmosphere. The idea of a critical citizen is predicated on the possibility of public reason, whereas both India's formal-institutional discourse and the prevalent culture of loyalty foreclose that possibility. So what, then, is a country's freedom? Is it about tactical silences in order to escape the wrath of the state and private vigilantes? If we are a free society, should the exercise of freedom be an act of bravado demanding that the citizen pays a heavy price for it? The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store