As everyone fears and doubts the outcome of elections, no political party truly wants to go to the polls. The ruling Congress, in particular, has this reluctance even more strongly.
Published Oct 02, 2025 | 11:26 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 02, 2025 | 11:26 AM
Voters at a polling booth in Telangana on Thursday, 30 November, 2023. (SpokespersonECI/X)
Synopsis: The Telangana local body elections have been pending for almost two years. Even though the state government said that the process would begin on 9 October, the uncertainty regarding the proposed enhanced reservation for backwards classes is seemingly stalling the election.
Will rural local body elections really take place in Telangana? And if they do, will the 42 percent reservations for backward classes proposed by the state government through Government Order (GO) No. 9 be implemented? Will the Telangana High Court, which is currently examining the matter, approve this reservation? What stand will the high court take on 8 October? Will it uphold the reservation GO?
Will the high court strike it down? Or will it prolong uncertainty by saying, “Let the process continue for now; we’ll see at the stage of final judgement?” Will the nomination process begin on 9 October, as announced by the State Election Commission (SEC)? Or will it be altered depending on the high court’s orders?
And if the High Court allows the process to continue with a promise of final judgement later, how long will that sword of uncertainty hang over the heads of winning candidates, threatening their terms? Endless questions — but no certain answers.
On 25 June, the Telangana High Court ordered that delimitation must be completed and the process of conducting local body elections should be concluded by 30 September. Treating that order as an iron law, the SEC announced the elections on 29 September.
According to this schedule, the election process will begin on 9 October, run in five phases, and end on 11 November with the declaration of results. Yet, many knots remain entangled in this affair — political, legal, and constitutional.
How many will unravel this week, and how many fresh knots will be tied, no one knows. If the high court declares that GO No. 9 is valid — that is, approves 42 percent reservation for backward classes — it will have nationwide consequences.
First, these rural local body elections were supposed to be held 20 months ago. The last gram panchayat elections were held in January 2019, and zilla parishad and mandal parishad elections in May 2019. This meant that gram panchayat terms expired in January 2024, and ZPTC and MPTC terms expired in July 2024.
Thus, elections should have been held 22 months ago for Gram Panchayats and 15 months ago for ZPTCs and MPTCs. Since then, governance in villages, mandals, and districts has been in the hands of special officers appointed by the government, not elected representatives.
As everyone fears and doubts the outcome of elections, no political party truly wants to go to the polls. The ruling Congress, in particular, has this reluctance even more strongly. By avoiding elections, power rests in the hands of government officials rather than elected representatives, sparing the government the headache of fund allocation and distribution.
Opposition parties, the BJP and the BRS, keep saying that not holding elections and denying power to elected representatives is illegal and undemocratic. But since they do not control state power, they show little interest in rural power, and since they have no respect for the lofty Gandhian ideal of local self-rule, they too do not insist on elections.
Thus, even though elections are delayed by almost two years, no one seems to care. The court directed, in its 25 June order, that elections should be held by 30 September only after some outgoing sarpanches and voluntary organisations approached it over the delay. Further, several dramatic and curious developments took place in the three months from the judgment until 30 September.
The Congress, which had long promised to conduct a caste census and give backward classes their rightful share in education, employment, and local self-government, carried out a social, educational, employment, economic, and caste survey in November 2024. Though the full report has not been released, it concluded that backward classes constitute 56.33 percent of the population (with Muslim OBCs at 10.08 percent).
Announcing these results in February 2025, the government logically moved to raise BC quotas in local bodies to 42 percent, drafting an ordinance to this effect and sending it to the Governor on 14 July. Given the high court’s 25 June directive to expedite elections, this ordinance may have been prepared in that context.
Since any reservation increase beyond a certain limit requires presidential assent, the Governor forwarded the ordinance to the President on 1 August. A month passed with no response. As ordinances must be converted into bills once the Assembly is in session, the ordinance was introduced as a bill on 31 August, passed by the Assembly, and sent again to the Governor, who, in September, forwarded it to the President.
Even now, it has not received presidential assent and has not become law.
Meanwhile, with the high court’s 30 September deadline approaching and BC quotas still unsettled, the state government, on 26 September, issued GO No. 9, effectively repackaging the same content of the earlier ordinance and bill.
One could say: When the ordinance fell, the bill came up; when the bill fell, the GO came up!
At least two petitions have challenged this GO’s 42 percent quota, prompting the high court to issue notices to the government and adjourn the hearing to 8 October. Only three days later, the SEC announced that the process would begin on 9 October.
Thus, 8 and 9 October are set to be decisive for local body elections and BC reservations in the state. Will the state government truly be confronting the Governor, the President, and the high court — i.e., the Union government — or are all of them playing their roles superbly in a common drama of deceiving BCs? The answer will emerge on those dates.
Moreover, the claim that BCs form 56 percent of the population itself is flawed. Counting Muslim OBCs, the figure is put at 46 percent. Since the last reliable caste census was in 1931, everyone has so far estimated the BC population between 52 percent and 60 percent. Now, without releasing the full report, the government is offering crow’s-foot arithmetic.
If Scheduled Castes are 17 percent and Scheduled Tribes 10 percent, is the government suggesting that so-called “upper castes” make up 17 percent of the state population? That is entirely untenable; their share is no more than 10 percent.
Leaving aside these numbers, what is the basis for fixing the BC reservation at 42 percent (for a population of 46 percent or 56 percent, including Muslims)? When the Constitution fixed 15 percent and eight percent reservations for SCs and STs, it was done broadly based on population.
Figures may vary slightly from state to state, but the principle of representation proportional to population has been followed. Why then is the same principle not applied to BCs? Particularly, at a time of resounding democratic slogan “jitni aabadi, utna haq” (rights proportional to population)?
The legal issue before the judiciary, however, is peculiar. Three decades ago, in an irrational ruling, the Supreme Court created the principle that total reservations should not exceed 50 percent. On that basis, 23 percent has gone to SCs and STs, and the remaining 27 percent to BCs (though in some places, even this share has been reduced for other reasons).
If the BC quota is raised to 42 percent, the total will rise to 67 percent, breaching the Supreme Court’s ceiling.
However, when Narendra Modi’s government amended the Constitution in 2019 to create 10 percent additional reservation for economically weaker sections (EWS) — targeted solely at “upper castes” — no one remembered the Supreme Court’s ceiling.
The then-TRS government in Telangana implemented this EWS quota from 2021. Only now, when BCs demand their rightful share — which is not even equal to their population but about 10 percent less, does this ceiling suddenly become a stumbling block.
This is not a matter concerning just one political party or the judiciary. None of them respects the fundamental democratic principle that every community’s share in the population should be reflected in education, jobs, and governance. Each looks only at how much political advantage can be gained by appeasing this or that community. The whole process has become a grand deception, a farce, a staged drama played by all.
Here, a 44-year-old experience is worth recalling. Based on the recommendations of the Muralidhar Rao Commission on BC quotas, the then-chief minister NT Rama Rao announced 44 percent reservation in July 1986. Dominant-caste students protested massively and went to the high court, which struck it down. The state government did not appeal to the Supreme Court.
When a delegation of civil society representatives urged NTR to file an appeal, he reportedly replied: “Why, brother, create unnecessary fuss? Our good intention to help BC brothers is already known to them. Isn’t that enough?”
This is the world of empty gestures and hollow hands. Four decades have passed, but nothing has changed!
(Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
