New Delhi:  The Supreme Court on Thursday (October 16) dismissed the Telangana government's appeal against a high court order that had stayed its move to implement a 42% reservation for Backward Classes (BCs) in the state's upcoming local body elections.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta refused to interfere with the interim stay, affirming that it could not take a view inconsistent with previous Constitution Bench rulings that established a 50% ceiling on total reservations. The court, however, clarified that elections could proceed as scheduled on October 23 and 27, provided the overall quota does not exceed this 50% cap.

The decision leaves the ruling Congress government's next steps uncertain. Speaking to The Wire, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President Bomma Mahesh Kumar Goud said the party was yet to decide its course of action.

"Nothing has been decided yet. In the next two-three days we will have a PCC meeting with A. Revanth Reddy, the Chief Minister, and decide on the next steps," he said.

The state government had challenged the Telangana high court's October 9 order, which found that the proposed 42% BC quota, when combined with the existing 15% for Scheduled Castes and 10% for Scheduled Tribes, would push total reservations to 67%, breaching the constitutional limit.

In its detailed order, the high court had clarified that it had only stayed the excess reservation and there was no bar on conducting polls with the previous quota structure, which kept total reservations at 50%.

During Thursday's proceedings, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the Telangana government, argued that the enhanced quota was a "policy decision" and that the 50% ceiling was not an inflexible rule, citing potential for exceptions in "extraordinary situations."

The bench questioned the timing of the government's decision and whether it had fulfilled the "triple test" criteria laid down in the Supreme Court's 2010 K. Krishna Murthy judgment. This test requires a dedicated commission and empirical data to justify the nature and extent of reservations in local bodies, a condition the high court had noted that Telangana had not met.

Opposing the plea, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for a petitioner, argued that the high court’s stay was correctly grounded in established legal precedent, including the 2021 Vikas Kishanrao Gawali case which reaffirmed the 50% cap.

The Supreme Court bench ultimately concurred with this view.

"You cannot expect us to take a view different from the Constitution Bench about the 50% ceiling," the justices told Singhvi before dismissing the appeal.

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