As Cabinet meets today, BCs wait for a concrete decision on 42% reservations
This is the first Cabinet meeting after the government indicated that local body elections would be held soon, asking the party to get prepared. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy himself gave the indication asking leaders to go to the villages and work there and leave their recognition by the party to him. In fact, he has also put the onus on Ministers for the success of party candidates.
The Chief Minister is likely to seek the opinion of the Ministers on amending the Panchayat Raj Act of 2018 to increase the reservations and legal hurdles in it. Should the amendments be brought by an Ordinance or through a special session of the Legislative Assembly is the challenge before it.
The party functionaries, on the other hand, have been asked to go to the village level, exposing how the BRS government reduced the BC reservations in the local body polls from 34% to 23% when it brought in the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act in 2018.
The fear, however, is the legal challenges that are likely to crop up once the changes are made. The challengers may move the courts, arguing that unless the Centre amends the rules to overcome the ceiling of 50% reservations imposed by the Supreme Court, the State governments have no right to break the ceiling.
The Independent Committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Sudarshan Reddy, to review the caste survey data has completed its work and will submit the report to the State government soon. It has given a comprehensive view of the backwardness of each caste based on various parameters and apparently argued for the implementation of the proposed enhancement of reservations, covering even the most backward castes, thus fulfilling the demands of even the backward castes that have gone unrepresented in the political system so far.
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