Hyderabad: The entire ruling Congress leadership seems to have been rattled by the High Court’s stay orders on BC quota, ahead of the elections to local bodies.

The HC orders on Thursday came like a bolt from the blue for the party; and, that too within hours after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy instructed the Ministers and party senior leaders to camp in their respective Assembly constituencies and finalise the list of the candidates to contest MPTC and ZPTC elections.

In fact, the Congress leaders have been busy taking steps to win most of the wards in the elections to local bodies since September 29, when the State Election Commission announced the schedule for the polls. In some Assembly segments considered to be Congress strongholds, senior leaders were planning to meet opposition leaders and announce the “unanimous” selection of their candidates in MPTC and ZPTC seats.

Shocked over the HC stay orders, the Chief Minister started seeking legal opinion to proceed further in the court and is also weighing options to go for the elections to the local bodies without the 42 per cent BC quota by implementing the old 23 per cent reservation to backward communities.

TPCC chief Mahesh Kumar Goud said that the party will announce its next course of action only after receiving the copies of the court’s stay orders on BC reservation. “We are committed to implementing 42 per cent reservation for BCs under any circumstances," he said. He criticized the opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi for not supporting the government in mounting pressure on the Union government to get the pending BC quota bills approved. State BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar said that the state government conducted a caste survey, constituted a dedicated commission as well as a sub-committee, the cabinet then approved it and the government enacted a law by amending the Panchayat Raj Act.