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Setting in motion his promise in Telangana earlier this month to create a sub-quota within the Scheduled Castes (SCs) reservations for the southern state’s Madiga community, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and senior officials to expedite the formation of a committee to study the issue.
Telangana goes to polls on November 30.
On November 11, at a public rally organised by the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), the prime minister was seen consoling Dalit leader Manda Krishna Madiga, who flagged how the Malas, another SC community in Telangana, while numerically fewer, have cornered the benefits of the SC reservation. At the rally in Secunderabad, he promised to take steps to facilitate a sub-quota for Madigas within the SC reservation. It was a rare instance of the prime minister attending a rally organised by a single caste group.
On Friday, at a public meeting in Armoor, Nizamabad, Union Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) promises that a backward caste leader would be made chief minister and that a “vertical quota” would be set apart for the Madiga community. The move is being seen as the BJP’s answer to the Congress’ outreach to SCs by promising to increase the quantum of the quota and caste Census. The BJP in Telangana has also promised to make an Other Backward Class (OBC) leader as its chief minister if it were to form the government.
A seven-judge Constitution Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, will start hearing a case related to subdividing the SC quota from mid-January 2024. The case relates to Punjab’s efforts at introducing sub-quotas within the SC reservation. Punjab has tried to introduce a sub-quota within the SC reservation since 2006.
There are some precedents for splitting SC reservations. In 2009, the Tamil Nadu government made a special reservation for Arunthathiyars within the 18 per cent reservation for SCs in the state. In 2007 in Bihar, the Nitish Kumar government carved out a ‘Mahadalits’, or most backward Dalits, category, which excluded Dhobi, Paswan, Dushad, and Jatav castes. Later, it declared all SC castes, other than Paswans, as Mahadalit. In 2020, Haryana split SC reservations in admissions by creating a ‘Deprived SC’ group, leaving out the Jatavs and Ravidasia communities. The UPA government constituted Usha Mehta Commission favoured the categorisation of SCs in its report in 2008.
