Telangana okays 42% BC reservation bills

Telangana’s assembly waved through two hefty bills on 17 March 2025, jacking up Backward Classes (BC) reservations to 42% across education, government jobs, and local politics. Chief minister A Revanth Reddy’s government, riding a caste survey from February 2024 pegging BCs at 56.36% of the state’s 3.5 crore souls, pushed this through after an eight-hour debate. “It’s social justice delivered,” Reddy said, flanked by nods from BRS, BJP, AIMIM, and CPI—a rare all-party high-five in Hyderabad’s tense halls.

The nuts and bolts are stark—BCs jump from 23% to 42%, Scheduled Castes from 15% to 18%, Scheduled Tribes from 6% to 10%, smashing the Supreme Court’s 50% quota cap with a bold 70% total. Picture a Warangal student eyeing a college seat or a Medak clerk chasing a promotion—those odds just shifted. Reddy’s banking on a Delhi encore, urging PM Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi to back a constitutional tweak. “We’re leading a revolution,” he posted on X, a nod to his Congress poll promise from 2023’s Kamareddy Declaration.

It’s not all cheers—legal shadows loom. The 1992 Indra Sawhney ruling caps quotas, and Bihar’s 65% hike got axed by Patna’s High Court last June. Telangana’s caste census, a first for India, stirred the pot—56.36% BCs, 1.9 crore strong—yet BRS’s K Kavitha sniped at the numbers, wanting more. A Nizamabad teacher might feel the lift, but the bill’s fate hinges on Parliament’s green light. This is Reddy’s gamble paying off, for now, with the state’s pulse beating louder.