SC decision on classification of SC/STs gives hope to Madigas

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday on sub-classification of SC and ST groups has given a ray of hope to the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), which has been agitating for the categorisation of the Scheduled Castes quota to ensure judicious distribution of benefits among all SC communities for 26 years.

The MRPS led by founder president Manda Krishna Madiga had succeeded in 1997 when the erstwhile AP government of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu passed the Rationalisation of Reservation Act to categorise the

SC community quotas on the basis of population. The Act categorised SCs into A, B, C and D groups in accordance with each group’s relative backwardness and proportion of population. The Act was challenged before the High Court and a five-judge bench upheld the Act 4:1 in the year 2000. The community enjoyed categorised reservation benefits till the Supreme Court struck down the Act in November 2004.

After that, the MRPS intensified its struggle which led to the constitution of Justice Usha Mehra Commission to study categorisation of SC reservations. The commission recommended empowering the state governments to sub-classify the reservations.

Reacting to the Supreme Court judgment, Manda Krishna on Friday told Deccan Chronicle that it had given confidence that they will finally get justice. He said the current bench might have noticed the flaws in the earlier verdict which was why it had observed that the state governments have power for the sub-classification of quotas.

He said that the SC categorisation was on the agenda of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government at the Centre and Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu had been supporting the sub-classification of SC reservations since the beginning.