Telangana Polls: PM Modi to Speak at Madiga Meet; All About the SC Community And Its Key Demand

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be speaking at a meeting organised by the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi in Hyderabad on Saturday. This is significant as it is likely to spur a demand for sub-categorisation of Dalits in the poll-bound state and, hence, the BJP can score brownie points from the scheduled castes by making an announcement on those lines.

Formed by Manda Krishna Madiga in the early 1990s, the organisation has been spearheading a movement demanding categorisation of reservation for the SCs. The Madigas are a numerically strong SC community in Telangana, and the founder of the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS) has been demanding that there should be equitable reservation for SC sub-castes.

Different political parties have courted the MRPS at different times, but no concrete step has been taken. From the BJP, former vice-president Venkaiah Naidu had been a supporter of their cause, but his retirement from active politics caused the association to lose steam.

Last month, Manda Krishna Madiga had met union home minister Amit Shah to submit a representation in favour of categorisation of SCs. After wooing the adivasis in the state with a tribal university and other measures, this might be the BJP’s attempt to woo Dalits. It has already promised a chief minister from the backward castes if it comes to power in the state.

Out of 119 constituencies in Telangana, 19 are reserved for the SCs. In its ‘SC Declaration’ this year, the Congress has promised corporations for different sub-castes like Madiga and Mala from the SC community. With its ‘Dalit Bandhu’ scheme, the ruling BRS has tried to reach out to the SCs. Chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao named the new secretariat after BR Ambedkar and erected a 125-foot statue of the Father of the Constitution.

In 1996, the Andhra Pradesh government under N Chandrababu Naidu had appointed the Justice P Ramachandra Raju commission to look into the need for categorisation of SCs. Based on its findings, the TDP government had passed a government order to categorise SCs into A, B, C and D categories. The Mala Mahanadu, however, challenged this and it was eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court. The Malas are a politically strong SC sub-caste in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Again in 2009, when the Congress was in power in Andhra Pradesh, the Justice Usha Mehra Commission had submitted a report in favour of categorisation, but the report was put into cold storage soon after.