VIJAYAWADA: Former minister Mudragada Padmanabham’s Kapu Ikya Garjana at Tuni in East Godavari district on Sunday seeking BC status to Kapus has galvanised all parties into action to woo the numerically strong Kapus in the Coastal Andhra belt.
They are in the race to have their share in the Kapu pie but at the same time are cautious in not alienating the BCs who feel threatened by the demand for BC status to Kapus. The YSRC and the Congress have given a call to make the public meeting a success while the TDP is doing a tight rope walk to ensure that neither the BCs nor the Kapus are hurt by its decisions because it needs the support of both the communities to remain in power.
Mudragada Padmanabham, who is synonymous with Kapu cause, is once again raising his voice on why there is so much delay in according BC status to Kapus. The public meeting is likely to attract Kapus from not only twin Godavari districts but Rayalaseema and other parts of the state. Organisers expect the attendance to be in lakhs and are making arrangements accordingly.
The organisers have invited who is who among the Kapus including Dasari Narayana Rao, C Ramachandraiah, Ummareddy Venkateswarlu, Ambati Rambabu and Kothapalli Subbarayudu. Padmanabham will speak at the beginning and end of the public meeting.
Even as Padmanabham calls the constitution of Kapu Welfare Corporation and BC Commission as Chief Minister N Chandrababu NaiduÂs measures to keep the community in good humour rather than benefiting them with reservations, the TDP is doing a trapeze act trying to convince the BCs that listing of Kapus in the BC list would not hurt their interests and at the same time telling the Kapus that it is dead serious about its election-eve promise.
The promise of reservations to Kapus is not new and it has been there since 1993 when the then chief minister late K Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, speaking at a huge public meeting at Eluru, had announced that he would keep it come what may. He later issued a GO but the High Court struck it down when BC Welfare Association president R Krishnaiah challenged it. Since then a lot of water has flown in the Godavari river and over a period of time, promise of reservation to Kapus has become more of an election promise to attract Kapus rather than for keeping it.
Already, the BCs have expressed their resentment against the move to accord BC status to Kapus and they have been holding protests here and there. R Krishnaiah, who is a TDP legislator in Telangana, says Kapus do not need reservations. “They are socio-economically well off. If they are given BC status they would corner all the positions in panchayat raj institutions and in the central government as BCs have not been categorised for purpose of reservations,” he told ENS.
Padmanabham says Chandrababu Naidu’s professions that he would include the Kapus among the BCs are only a political stunt and that at the end of the day, nothing will happen. In a strongly-worded letter to the Chief Minister recently, Padmanabham accused him of adopting delaying tactics in according BC status and that Kapus would not keep lying low for ever but would hit back. He has asked Naidu to pass a resolution and send it to Parliament for their inclusion in the ninth schedule. “There is no need for constitution of any commission which is only a delaying tactic,” he said.
Though Krishnaiah says it is the only way if the government wants to include Kapus among the BCs, he argues that it is easier said than done. “It is a fact that if the demand from AP is included in the ninth schedule the Supreme Court direction that reservation percentage can’t exceed 50 per cent would not apply but it is easier said than done since the state should mobilise support in Parliament to see that amendment is done. Then there is a case going on in Supreme Court as to whether this kind of amendment could be allowed to the ninth schedule to increase quota for BCs,” Krishnaiah says.