HYDERABAD: Though Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy hinted that the elections to local bodies would be held in the last week of June, the BC associations demanded that the poll should be conducted only after the caste census is conducted.
The Congress announced in its manifesto that the reservations in local bodies would be increased from 22 per cent to 42 per cent. In this backdrop, National BC Welfare Association chief and Rajya Sabha member R Krishnaiah demanded that state government take up caste census in the state after the completion of the Lok Sabha election process.
He recalled that AICC leader Rahul Gandhi too assured that the Congress will increase reservations to 50% and demanded that the elections to local bodies should be conducted only after taking up the caste census so that the BCs would get fair reservations in local bodies.
He also recalled that the NT Rama Rao government introduced reservations in ZPTC and MPTC and municipalities only after the agitations by the BCs. The 20 per cent reservations to BCs provided by NTR were increased to 34 per cent by the then Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy government. Later, the reservations were reduced to 22 per cent as per a Supreme Court order.