Hyderabad: The Telangana government has decided to approach the Supreme Court over the Centre’s delay in clearing its 42% reservation bill for Backward Classes (BCs), Chief Minister Revanth Reddy announced on Saturday.
Speaking at the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) meeting of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee at Gandhi Bhavan, Revanth Reddy said two senior advocates had been appointed to argue the state’s case in the apex court. The legal challenge will focus on the 90-day constitutional time limit for Presidential assent to state legislation, under which the BC quota bill is still pending.
Telangana Supreme Court BC bill strategy follows legislative hurdles
Revanth Reddy said that instead of filing a fresh petition that could be delayed in listing, the issue would be raised through ongoing proceedings to ensure faster judicial scrutiny. He criticised the previous BRS government for enacting a law that capped local body reservations at below 50%, effectively excluding BCs from receiving any quota.
To counter that, the current government had passed a new bill and issued an ordinance amending the earlier law, which the Governor has forwarded to the Centre.
The Chief Minister emphasised that the Congress had made a political commitment to the BC community and that the pending quota bill must be enacted without further delay. He also pointed to the caste census conducted in the state and the passage of 42% BC reservations in education and employment as part of that commitment.
Separately, Revanth Reddy criticised both the BJP and BRS for staging what he called political drama over urea supply shortages. He alleged that BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao had linked Vice Presidential election support to fertiliser allocation decisions, revealing what he described as opportunistic bargaining.
CM Revanth Reddy also thanked Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Mallikarjun Kharge for selecting former Supreme Court judge Justice Sudarshan Reddy as the INDIA bloc’s Vice Presidential candidate, describing the retired judge as a defender of civil liberties.