Madigas see injustice in Telangana's internal quota allocation

Hyderabad: Despite the efforts of the Congress government to gain the support of the Madiga community by announcing the sub categorisation of Scheduled Castes, the Dalit community appears to be miffed with the allocation of the sub quota. Madigas are the single largest subgroup among SCs in Telangana.

The founder of the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), Manda Krishna Madiga, while welcoming the judicial commission's report, criticised the Congress government for allocating only 9 per cent of the quota to Madigas, arguing that it should be 11 per cent, which is more in line with their population proportion.

Two days ago, the state government accepted the recommendations of a judicial commission appointed by it for the implementation of SC sub categorisation, which has been a long-pending demand of MRPS. The government also rejected the panel's recommendation to exempt the creamy layer from reservations. On Tuesday, during the special session, the government placed the panel's report on the SC categorisation in the state assembly. Before the House convened, the cabinet accepted the report from the judicial panel.

Following a Supreme Court verdict, the Telangana government had appointed a judicial commission headed by retired High Court judge Justice Shameem Akther on SC sub categorisation. The panel submitted its recommendations to the cabinet subcommittee headed by state Civil Supplies and Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Monday.

“According to the Commission, Madigas were 32.33 lakh while Malas were only 15.23 lakh. Given this, how can 15.23 lakh Malas get 5 per cent and Madigas, more than double the Malas' population, get only 9 per cent?,” Manda Krishna Madiga asked and added that Madigas should get 11 per cent. He termed it as gross injustice to Madigas.

The single-member commission has identified a total of 59 subcastes within the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Telangana. The commission has recommended classifying these sub-castes into three groups and recommended distributing the total 15 per cent reservation among these three groups. The commission proposed the allocation as Group 1: 1 per cent reservation for 15 sub-castes, which constitute 3.288 per cent of the population. Group 2: 9 per cent reservation for 18 sub-castes, representing 62.748 per cent of the population. Group 3: 5 per cent reservation for 26 sub-castes, accounting for 33.963 per cent of the population.

Group 2, which includes Madigas, comprises 63 per cent of the SC population, amounting to 9.4 per cent of the 15 per cent quota, but this has been rounded down to 9 per cent.