Hyderabad, Nov 16 (IANS) The Telangana Cabinet meeting on Monday is likely to take a decision on conducting local body elections as the High Court last week directed the state government to announce the poll schedule by November 24.
With both the Supreme Court and High Court setting aside government order providing 42 per cent reservation to Backward Classes (BCs), the state government will have to conduct the local body polls with 50 per cent cap on overall reservation.
The ruling Congress may decide to allocate 42 per cent of the tickets in local body polls to BCs.
While setting aside the government order for 42 per cent reservation for BCs, the courts made it clear that the government may go ahead with the conduct of elections.
The BC groups are demanding that the state government should conduct local body elections only after 42 per cent reservations were legally cleared.
After the byelection to the Jubilee Hills Assembly seat, which was won by the Congress, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy said the Cabinet will take a decision after discussion.
Chief Secretary Ramakrishna Rao has directed the Panchayat Raj department to prepare a note on the actions to be taken for conducting the elections.
The High Court on October 9 stayed the implementation of the government order, providing 42 per cent reservation for the BCs.
The state government challenged the interim order in the Supreme Court, which refused to interfere with the High Court order.
The courts left the door open for conducting local body polls with the existing 50 per cent cap on overall reservation.
The government order had taken the total reservation to 67 per cent, exceeding the 50 per cent limit prescribed by the Supreme Court.
Under the existing system, BCs enjoy 27 per cent reservation.
Holding the local body polls is crucial for the Congress-led state government as lack of Central funds to local bodies due to the delay in holding polls threaten to derail the governance in rural areas.
The State Election Commission (SEC) had issued the notification for rural local body polls in five phases but it suspended the same after the High Court order, setting aside the government order on BC reservation.
The government order was issued on September 26 to pave the way for the conduct of local body elections.
It was on June 25 that the Telangana High Court had directed the state government to conduct local body elections in three months.
The High Court had set September 30 deadline for conducting the polls.
The state government issued the government order as the two Bills passed by the Assembly on August 31 were still awaiting the Governor’s approval.
Telangana Municipalities (Third Amendment) Bill, 2025, and Telangana Panchayat Raj (Third Amendment) Bill, 2025, were passed to enhance the BC reservation in local bodies to 42 per cent by removing 50 per cent cap on the quota for all categories.
The issue of BC reservation has been dominating the Telangana politics for several months ever since the government decided to enhance the BC quota in education, jobs and local bodies, based on the report of the caste survey.
This was one of the key promises made by the Congress in the 2023 state Assembly elections.
–IANS
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