Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Tuesday, October 9 announced it will appoint a one man judicial commission to study the sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes (SC).
The cabinet sub-committee, headed by irrigation and civil supplies minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy, decided to recommend to the Telangana government the constitution of a one-man judicial commission for sub-classification.
The government has decided to constitute the commission led by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or high court to study the backwardness among groups with the scheduled castes. “This process must be legally sound and withstand judicial scrutiny,” Kumar said in a meeting held on Tuesday.
On August 1, the Supreme Court backed the subcategorisation of the SCs and the Telangana government also agreed to implement the same. The cabinet committee appointed by the Telangana government a few months ago had already held three meetings on sub-categorisation and resolved to use 2011 census data as the basis for sub-classification.
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During the meeting, officials informed that the advocate general has already given the draft terms of reference for appointing the judicial commission. Various recruitment boards in Telangana, including TGPSC, TGLPRB, SCCL and TGTRANSCO have been directed to submit data on the sub-caste-wise employment of SCs.
About 30% of the required data from the finance department has already been gathered, officials told the committee members.
At present, 1,082 representations from communities, organisations, and individuals regarding sub-categorisation have been received by the sub-committee. Teams from Telangana visited Punjab and Tamil Nadu to study the implementation of sub-classification in those states, while a visit to Haryana was postponed due to the enforcement of the model code of conduct.
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The research team which visited Tamil Nadu in September said the state provides 18% reservation for SCs in education and employment. There are 76 SC sub-castes in that state.
Cabinet sub-committee members Seethakka and Damodar Rajanarasimha said there should be a time-bound process for the study, and the committee should visit some districts to interact with people and seek their opinions and suggestions.
“The committee would soon visit several districts to gather public feedback on SC sub-categorisation. The analysis of the collected data may be assigned to reputable government organisations like the Centre for Economic and Social Studies to ensure a thorough and impartial review,” Kumar concluded.
