more-in State government will be filing a Special Leave Petition in the next few days in the Supreme Court to appeal against the High Court’s ruling that reservations should not exceed 50% in the Panchayat elections. Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao made it clear that the State government would file an appeal in the Supreme Court to restore its own judgement of 2013 when it allowed overall reservations to various communities to touch 61% pending the survey to assess the population of backward classes in the State. “We are not in a position to state how the Apex Court will dispose of our petition. But the State is going ahead and is geared to hold elections in case the Apex court gives a green signal on prevailing reservations,” highly placed sources said. The term of the elected bodies of Panchayats will end by July 31 and there were 12 more days time for the government to take a decision. The pros and cons of going ahead or postponing the election would be analysed depending on the situation, they said. Sources admitted that unless a survey was done by BC Commission, there would be no legal sanctity to the demand to provide reservation based on population of BCs. A scientific survey was necessary to assess the BCs population post bifurcation in the Telangana State to give sanctity to the data, sources said. The Samagra Kutumba Survey conducted by the State government helped the government to gather data about different communities, their socio and economic status, landless STs and SCs, etc., basically to plan its welfare programmes. It would not have the same status of a survey done as per the guidelines of Government of India. State government apparently was keen to focus its attention on completion of its flagship programmes in the run up to the elections than giving priority for a survey on BC population which will be a time consuming exercise, sources said.

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