Hyderabad: Nearly a month after the Telangana cabinet deciding to implement 42 percent reservations for Backward Classes (BC), the state government on Friday, September 26, passed an order to implement it in view of the upcoming Telangana local body elections. This comes even in spite of the bill related to it still waiting for the President of India’s assent.
It it to be seen if the move will meet legal hurdles in the coming days before the upcoming local body elections in Telangana. According to GO MS 09, the Telangana government decided to implement the order based on the one man commission’s (ex-IAS officer Busani Venkateshwara Rao) recommendations to have more adequate political representation for BC communities.
It may be noted that both the Telangana Congress and the main opposition Bharat Rashtra have been talking about higher representation for BCs in local body elections ever since the state was formed in 2014. The BRS even wanted to have 50% reservations but it was not able to achieve it. Earlier on August 30, BC welfare minister Ponnam Prabhakar has announced that the state government will conduct local body elections by implementing 42 percent reservations for Backward Classes (BC).
To enable it, he said the 50 percent cap on reservations in the Telangana Municipal Laws (Amendment) Act of 2018, and the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act of 2018 will be removed by making amendments to these laws. Ponnam said that a discussion will be held in the present Assembly session, where the amended bills will be enacted into legislations, for implementing 42 percent reservations for BCs in the local body elections.
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Pointing out that an ordinance to that effect was already passed in the previous assembly session and sent to state Governor Jishnu Dev Verma, who had sent it to the President’s approval, the Telangana BC minister said that it was part of the process to pass the bill after an ordinance was passed.
He said that after consulting legal experts and taking opinions from all political parties, it was decided to go for the elections with 42 percent reservations for BCs, and the reservations to SCs as per the 2011 population census.
When media representatives questioned about any possible legal complications that could arise, he got irritated and downplayed those apprehensions.
In the 2019 Telangana local body elections BRS-backed candidates swept the polls and many were elected unanimously. Similarly in the 2020 urban municipality elections as well KCR managed to win about 100 plus of the nearly 140 municipalities and corporations that went to polls in January 2020. The BRS about 60% of the wards, leaving both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) then far behind.
In the 2020 local body polls the BJP was more or less non-existent. However, it managed to win eight Assembly seats with 20% of the vote share in the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections and eight Lok Sabha seats out of 17 during the 2024 Parliament polls with nearly half the vote share. This time it is to be seen how the BRS performs, as some observers believe that it will not put much of a fight as winners may defect to the ruling party eventually.
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