With the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Governments committed to provide or increase the reservation quota for various sections of the people in the two States, the declaration of Prime Minister Modi that the States cannot overrule the 50 per cent cap imposed by the Supreme Court has come as a big dampener and was likely to snowball into a major controversy.
While Telangana legislature has passed a Bill increasing the reservation for Muslim minority to 12 per cent and for the Scheduled Tribes to 10 per cent, Andhra Pradesh has also passed a legislation to provide 5 per cent quota to the Kapus and three other castes. While in case of Telangana the implementation of the decision will increase the total quota to 62 per cent, in Andhra Pradesh it will increase to 55 per cent.
Prime Minister’s remarks made during the election campaign in Gujrat in context of the demand of Patels for reservation, have caused discomfiture to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao who had claimed that the Prime Minister was favorable towards increasing the reservations for Muslims and the STs.
KCR has also made an initiative to make a common cause with many other States who were facing demands for reservation form various quarters. He was demanding parity with Tamil Nadu and many other states in the country who have quota much larger than the cap of 50 per cent. He also demanded that the increased quota should be provided constitutional safeguard by increasing it in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution.
Prime Minister’s statement has provided fresh ammunition to the opposition Congress and the BJP in Telangana, While BJP has been refuting KCR’s claim that PM Modi was positive on Muslim reservation, the Congress has launched fresh broadside against KCR.
“This has exposed the hallowness and evil design of the TRS govt and CM KCR for deliberately and willfully misleading the innocent Muslims with false assurances and which cannot be implemented at all”, said Mohammed Ali Shabbir, leader of opposition in Telangana Legislative Council. He demanded the Chief Ministers of the two Telugu states of how they would redeem their commitments for hiking quotas for Muslims, STs in Telangana and Kapus in Andhra Pradesh.
Charging the Chief Ministers of the two states with opportunism he demanded that CM KCR at least wake up now and give clarity as to how the 12 per cent quota will be given to Muslim and 10 per cent quota to STs from the next academic year.