Backward Class reservations may hit election schedule

Hyderabad: The issue of reservations for Backward Classes (BCs) is likely to figure in impending elections to Panchayat Raj (PR) Institutions and Local Civic Body elections which are being looked at as a dress rehearsal for next year’s Assembly elections in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state.

The decision of the TS government to hold the elections to PR Institutions in July this year has been stalled by BC organisations that have approached the High Court questioning the method adopted for reserving wards for BCs in Gram Panchayats.

BC organisations in Andhra Pradesh have also moved the High Court seeking reservations for BCs group wise. Though the High Court has not granted any stay against the ongoing process to identify wards and reservation of wards, the BC organisations are questioning the notifications of reservations of wards as and when the notifications are issued.

Elections to the PR Institutions such as Zilla Parishad, Mandal Parishad and Gram Panchayat and also Nagar Panchayats, Municipalities and Municipal Corporations are scheduled for this year as the term of the elected institutions ends in July in both states. Elections were held to the PR Institutions in July 2013 in the combined state of AP. The term of the local bodies in both states will end in March 2019.

The Telugu Desam had won a majority of municipalities and municipal corporations in the Seemandhra region in the elections held in 2014 prior to the bifurcation, and emerged as the ruling party in the 2014 Assembly polls.

But in Telangana, though the Congress had won a majority of seats in civic bodies, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti bagged the posts of chairman and mayor with the support of the MIM and emerged as the ruling party in the 2014 Assembly polls.

Both the TRS and the TD were expected to conduct the elections to PR institutions and civic bodies to test their strength ahead of the general elections. The legal issues raised by the BC communities appears to have dented their plans.

The main contention of the BC organisations of Telangana is that the state government has identified the BC Gram Panchayats illegally and illogically by excluding the 1,308 Gram Panchayats in Scheduled Areas and 1,326 Gram Panchayats of the 100 per cent ST populated areas from the total 12,751 Gram Panchayats and have calculated the BC population only out of the remaining 10,117.

Dr Cheruku Sudhakar, who has moved the High Court against the Telangana state government, has claimed that due to this unscientific calculation the BC communities are losing about 896 Gram Panchayats.

Dasoju Sravan Kumar, Congress leader and another petitioner before the High Court, said that for identification of the BCs under Panchayat Raj Act for providing reservation in local bodies, political backwardness has to be taken into consideration and reservations have to be provided on the basis of contemporaneous empirical data.

He said that though the state government is claiming that it is providing 34 per cent reservations to BCs, actually the said reservations for BCs works out to only 27 per cent, not even reaching the statutorily declared 34 per cent.

He said their main fight for providing reservations to the BCs category wise as BC ‘A’, BC ‘B’, BC ‘C’and BC ‘D’ as provided under Section 17(4) of the PR Act, was not being done now in the present elections.

While the BC organisations of TS have been fighting for political reservations, the BC associations from Andhra Pradesh have moved the High Court against the action of the state government in not disclosing the Justice Manjunath Commission report which was constituted for paving the way for reservation to the Kapu community and not undertaking the survey to provide political reservations to them in panchayati raj and civic bodies.

AP Backward Classes Welfare Association president K. Allmmen Raju said that under Article 15 (4) &(5)  of the Constitution the state shall make any special provision for advancement of the socially and educationally Backward Classes of citizens providing reservations in the education and political fields.   

He said that to determine the percentage of BCs a survey has to be conducted by the state government, but till date the AP government has not conducted any survey and they have moved the court seeking to direct the state government for the survey.

Door-to-door survey must to identify BC voters: Lawyers

Advocates say that the Backward Classes identified for the purpose of Article 15(4) of the Constitution has no application while deciding and providing political reservation to backward classes in local bodies.

They said that the door-to-door survey was mandatory to identify the BC voters under the Gram Panchayat Rules 2007 which deal with denotification, deletion, show cause, objections and re-notification of wards pursuant to Section 295 of the Telangana State Panchayat Raj Act 2018.

B. Rachna Reddy, High Court advocate, said that Section 17 of the Telangana State Panchayat Raj Act, 2018 (TS PR Act), does not provide for exclusion of any category of Gram Panchayats before calculating the posts of chairpersons of BCs or other categories.

K.S. Murthy, who also practices in the High Court said that the Supreme Court has held that elections to Panchayat Raj bodies is to be conducted only after identification of BC voters through a scientific survey.

Lawyer B. Rachna Reddy points out that neither AP nor Telangana has done any scientific survey so far.

Mr Murthy said that Section 4 of the PESA Act and Section 255 of the TS PR Act, 2018 reserves the sarpanch posts only for Schedule Tribes (STs).

He explained, “It also says that members of the panchayat should be proportionate to their population. If SCs present in these Scheduled Areas are excluded from the calculation of sarpanches in accordance with their population proportion in the state, then Scheduled Castes would stand to lose constitutionally guaranteed reservation in accordance with their proportion.”