Telangana Allows SC Sub-Categorisiation In Jobs, Education

The Telangana government has enforced the Scheduled Caste (SC) sub-categorisation for all future recruitment and education institutions, after a detalied legal and adminstrative process. The Act comes into force on April 14, making Telangana the first state to implement SC sub-categorisation after the Supreme Court verdict.

The Telangana minister Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the policy aims to bring equity in reservation benefits among SC subcastes.

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Schedule Castes in Telangana have a 15% reservation, and assumption existed that the SC sub-castes are receving more benefits than the others. The Supreme Court passed an order in the past giving power of reservation of sub-castes to states. Now with the enforcement of the new act, the further issues in employment and education will be done as per the SC sub-categorization.

As per minister Reddy, a meeting is scheduled on April 15, to compile all departmental vacancies and the government order outlining the modalities of the act will be issued on Ambedkar Jayanthi. The first copy of the government order was handed over to the Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy.

Telangana government formed a sub-committee to decide the sub-categorisation headed by Uttam Kumar Reddy, Telangana Minister for Irrigation, Food and Civil Supplies. Other members were Vice Chairman and Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha, Minister Seethakka and Ponnam Prabhakar, retired judge Shamim Akhtar, Principal Secretary for Welfare Sridhar, Law Secretary Tirupati and other senior officials.

The sub-committee reviewed the implementation guidelines based on the recommonedations fo the Justice Shamim Akhtar Commission and gave final approval to issue the directives.

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The Act rationalises SC reservation by categorising the 59 SC sub-castes into three groups based on inter-se backwardness.

• Group I comprises 15 most disadvantaged communities, with an overall 3.288% population and llocated a 1% reservation.
• Group II has 18 moderately benefitted communites with 62.74% of the SC population and is allocated 9% reservation.
• Group III includes 26 relatively better-off communities, with 33.963% of the SC population and receives 5% of the SC reservation.