HYDERABAD: Demanding the Telangana government to implement the High Court order on conducting caste-wise enumeration of Backward Classes (BCs) in the State with a socio-economic survey on their conditions, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee President N Uttam Kumar Reddy wrote an open letter to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Tuesday and appealed him to withdraw the ordinance amending PR Act 2018, which brings down reservations for Backward Classes in Panchayat Raj elections.
“The Congress party disagrees with your government’s ordinance reducing the BC reservation quota under the a pretext of a Supreme Court verdict. The Congress party states that reservations for BCs in local body elections must be commensurate with the population percentage of BCs in Telangana,” he said, adding that entire Telangana BC community is agitated about reducing reservations for BCs in panchayat and local body elections.
Further, he alleged that the government was ignoring the orders of the High Court dated June 26, 2018 directing the State government to conduct detailed investigation with regard to backwardness of population, collect data, invite objections from general public, analyse the same and then fix the reservation in favour of Backward Classes in accordance with the directions of a division bench of High Court in “Nimmaka Jaya Raj vs The Government of Andhra Pradesh”.
Objecting to the conduct of Panchayat Raj elections by the State Election Commission despite the defective electoral rolls used during the Assembly elections, the TPCC chief said: “Names of nearly 22 lakh eligible voters were missing from the electoral rolls which even Chief Electoral Officer Dr. Rajat Kumar had confirmed.”
“As per the schedule for summary revision of electoral rolls announced by ECI, the entire process up until the final publication of the revised electoral poll will be done by February 22, 2019 and hence, we feel that there is no point in holding the Panchayat Raj elections without waiting for revised electoral rolls as it will deprive several lakhs of people their right to vote,” he said.