SC Sub Categorization Telangana 1st Popular State Implement

Telangana on Monday became the first state in the country to implement Scheduled Castes SC sub categorization. Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy said a government order had been issued to this effect.

The order implements the Telangana Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservations) Act 2025. The Congress government in the state has issued a gazette notification with April 14, 2025 as the appointed day for sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes (SC) into three groups.

“The following Act of the Telangana Legislature received the assent of the Governor of Telangana on 8, April 2025 and the said assent is hereby first published on the 14th April 2025 in the Telangana Gazette for general information,” the GO said.

GO issued on Ambedkar Jayanti

The issuance of GO coincided with the Ambedkar Jayanti – the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar, the architect of Indian Constitution. The Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservation) Bill, 2025 was passed in the assembly last month.

Telangana government had earlier appointed a commission headed by retired High Court judge Justice Shameem Akther on SC sub- categorization, which made recommendations that the 59 Scheduled Caste (SC) communities be divided into three groups – I, II, and III for the total reservations of 15 per cent in government jobs and education.

What are the categories?

According to the notification, Scheduled Castes in the state will be divided into three categories – Group I, II and III.

Group I: As many as 15 sub-castes categorised as most backward have been classified as Group-I with 1 per cent reservation. These groups constitute just 0.5 per cent of the population, but the government decided to provide them with 1 per cent reservation with a view to provide educational and employment opportunities to the most backward among the SCs.

Group II: As many as 18 sub-castes of the total 59 which received marginal benefits have been placed under Group-II with 9 per cent reservation.

Group III: Similarly, 26 sub-castes that were relatively better placed in Group III in terms of opportunities with 5 per cent reservation.

Minister Reddy, who headed a sub-committee on SC Categorisation, said the first copy of the GO was given to Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on the morning of April 14.

“From today, from this moment, SC categorisation will be implemented in Telangana in employment and education. We have issued a GO to that extent and gave the first copy to the CM,” he told reporters.

Who will it benefit?

Minister Reddy said if the SC population goes up in the 2026 census, the reservations for it will go up accordingly.

Recruitment to government jobs would forthwith be based on the categorisation of the SC communities, and the youth from these communities were exhorted to avail the opportunity, the minister said, adding the categorisation would not be applicable to the vacancies already notified, the minister said.

Minister for Health C Damodar Rajanarsimha who co-chaired the sub-committee on SC Categorisation said 33 of the 59 sub-castes were continuing in the same group in which they were placed in the past and there was shuffling of only 26 sub-castes constituting 3.43 per cent of SC population.

The Supreme Court Verdict of 2024

The SC sub-classification policy has constitutional backing.

The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment on August 1 last year, upheld the constitutionality of sub-classifying the SCs and Scheduled Tribes (STs) to grant separate quotas for the most marginalized groups within these communities.

A seven-judge Constitution bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud ruled on whether sub-classification of SCs and STs is permissible for the purpose of reservation.

The ruling had consequences for states, such as Telangana, which wanted to give wider protection to some castes that are underrepresented despite reservation compared to the so-called dominant scheduled castes. The court also held that “historical and empirical evidence indicates that Scheduled castes are not a homogenous class.”

Address historical inequities: Experts

The Congress government took into consideration the contents of the Supreme Court’s verdict, empirical data, social, economic, educational, employment and political status of the SC communities in the categorisation of SCs into three groups for implementation of the rule of reservation.

Experts saud that the state’s decision to sub-classify 59 Scheduled Castes (SCs) into three groups marks a pivotal moment in India’s affirmative action discourse.

“The purpose of the decision, it seems, is to address the historical inequities within marginalised groups so that the benefit of reservation should not be monopolised by certain categories within a particular caste group,” said Prof Afroz Alam, head, Department of Political Science, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad told Mint.

Political Motives

The move comes with political motive, too. Alam said that Congress government led by CM Reddy has been trying to consolidate Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and SC voter blocs ahead of local body elections in the state. The OBCs and SCs comprise 70 per cent of Telangana’s electorate.

Telangana also recently decided to raise the OBC quota to 42 per cent. This move, however, challenges the Supreme Court’s 50 per cent quota cap established in the Indra Sawhney verdict (1992), reaffirmed in 2021 when the Maratha quota law was struck down.

Rahul Gandhi has been talking about the removal of 50 per cent cap on reservation. At the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session held in Ahmedabad, Gujarat earlier this month, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition in LoK Sabha, said that the Congress party will demolish the wall that is restricting reservation to 50 per cent for the SCs, the STs and the OBCs while pushing for a caste census across the country.

The larger national aim

Clearly, at the national level, the Telangana case is a model for the Congress party which is trying to rebrand itself as the party favoring emperical social justice and highlighting Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ‘reluctance’ to release caste census data, according to Prof Alam.

“Telangana is the first state in India to implement the revolutionary decision of SC sub-categorisation. We are all proud to have made history. On the highly auspicious day of the birth anniversary of Bharat Ratna Babasaheb Dr B R Ambedkar, the Telangana state government paid the best tribute by bringing into force a great act of social justice, addressing a long overdue demand for classification of SC sub-castes,” Telangana CM wrote on X on Monday.