42% BC quota: HC D-Day today

Hyderabad: With the Telangana High Court set to take up the petition challenging the 42 per cent BC reservation in local body elections on Wednesday, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, his Cabinet colleagues and top Congress leaders held a crucial meeting with legal experts here on Tuesday. They discussed measures to overcome the possible challenges and win the case.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister, state Congress in- charge Meenakshi Natarajan and TPCC President Mahesh Kumar Goud have reportedly decided to implement a 42 per cent quota in allotment of seats should the court reject the government order on the issue.

It must be noted that the High Court has already questioned the government for issuing an order for BC quota when two bills pertaining to enhancement of reservation were pending before the President. During the meeting on Tuesday, Revanth Reddy explained about the likelihood of a verdict favouring the government order. The only challenge they faced was on how the advocates convince the court with the empirical data collected during the recently conducted caste survey across the state. The official data on the BC population was important to substantiate their arguments in the court and win the case, he said. The division bench of Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy took up a writ petition on September 27, that questioned breach of the 50 per cent ceiling in reservations mandated by earlier Supreme Court judgments. After hearing the petitioners and the Advocate General, who appeared for the state, the bench posted the hearing for October 8.

“It is made clear that even if the election notification is issued for conduct of local body elections, the cause in the present writ petition survives. It must be heard on merit, as these writ petitions were filed before the election notification was issued,” the bench stated.

The Advocate General was instructed to submit details of the schedule of the local body elections announced by the State Election Commission (SEC) recently. The court has some limitations to intervene in the election schedule announced by the SEC. On Wednesday, the HC will take about 20 impleading petitions along with the main petition.

In a related development, another meeting of all BC ministers and top leaders from the backward communities was also held to seek the support of all BC communities ahead of the High Court hearing on the contentious issue. It may be mentioned here that Supreme Court refused to entertain a plea on Monday as the issue was before the Telangana HC.