Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy announced that the Telangana Government will move to implement reservations for sub-castes within the Scheduled Castes (SC) category, following a recent Supreme Court ruling. The government is prepared to issue an ordinance if necessary to facilitate these changes.
Reddy outlined plans to ensure that job notifications will reflect reservations for Madiga and Mala sub-castes and confirmed that a decision will soon be made on categorizing SCs into four sub-groups — A, B, C, and D. This follows a landmark decision by a seven-judge bench, led by Chief Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, which upheld the SC sub-classification for reservations in education and employment.
Reddy criticized the previous Bharata Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Government for not pursuing the issue during its tenure, noting that former MLA A Sampath Kumar was suspended from the state assembly for raising the SC categorization issue. The Congress Government, which came to power in December 2023, took immediate action by sending State representatives to argue the case before the Supreme Court, leading to the favorable judgment.
BRS working president KT Rama Rao expressed support for the ruling, recalling the party’s past efforts to advance SC categorization and highlighting BRS President K Chandrasekhar Rao’s personal advocacy for the cause. KTR urged the Congress government to begin the implementation process promptly and offered the BRS’s cooperation.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has chosen not to comment on the verdict, awaiting an official stance from its central leadership. Telugu Desam Party (TDP) general secretary Nara Lokesh welcomed the decision, reminding that the TDP’s previous government had also issued an ordinance for SC categorization in 1999.
Lokesh reaffirmed the party’s commitment to implementing SC reservations in line with the Supreme Court’s decision to ensure broad social and economic empowerment.
