Telangana constitutes commission to determine backward class quota in local bodies

Hyderabad, Nov  (IANS) The government of Telangana on Monday appointed retired IAS officer Busani Venkateshwara Rao for the enumeration of backward classes to determine reservations in local bodies.

Backward Classes Welfare Department issued an order, appointing the dedicated Commission, a day after Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy took the decision following a direction by the High Court.

The Commission will conduct contemporaneous rigorous empirical enquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness qua local bodies, within the state in order to specify the proportion of reservation required to be provisioned local body-wise.

B. Saidulu, Secretary, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Telangana Backward Classes Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society, has been appointed Secretary to assist the Commission.

The Commission has been asked to submit a comprehensive report within a month.

The panel is entitled to consider the material evidence collected by the BC Commission appointed in 2021 and also of the BC Commission appointed in September 2024.

According to the Government Order (GO), the Commission may take assistance from various organisations, institutions or individuals for obtaining such information or statistics as it may consider necessary or relevant from Central and state government offices, public sector undertakings, establishments/commissions/universities and other institutions or authorities.

The Commission may avail services of experts and researchers by holding meetings with them and if necessary study tours may also be organised and also seek assistance from recognised research institutions for analysis of empirical data.

The state government on Sunday decided to constitute a dedicated Commission as per the orders of the Telangana High Court.

The government had earlier entrusted the task to the Backward Classes Commission but former Rajya Sabha member and BC leader R Krishniah had approached the High Court and challenged this in the High Court.

A single-judge bench found the state’s existing approach of tasking the BC Commission with data collection contrary to the Supreme Court’s judgment in ‘Vikas Kumar Gavali vs. the State of Maharashtra’.

The state government has already decided to launch the social, economic, educational, employment and caste survey in the entire state on November 6. The Chief Minister asserted that the Court orders should be followed to avoid legal hurdles and other difficulties in the implementation of BC reservation in the local bodies.