The Telangana government, on Monday (Apr 14), issued a notification and officially enforced Scheduled Caste (SC) sub-categorization for future recruitments and education-related decisions, following a thorough legal and administrative process.  

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The Telangana Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservation) Act, 2025, came into force on April 14, coinciding with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's birth anniversary.

The historic move made Telangana the very first state in India to implement SC sub-categorisation after the Supreme Court's nod.

Telangana Minister for Irrigation, Food & Civil Supplies, Uttam Kumar Reddy, stated that the policy aims to ensure equitable distribution of reservation benefits among SC subcastes. As the head of the cabinet subcommittee on the matter, Reddy emphasized that the policy will promote social justice and ensure benefits reach the most backward communities.

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"SCs in Telangana have a 15% reservation, there has always been a feeling that some of the SC sub-castes are getting more benefit than the others. So when the Supreme Court gave a judgement about 6-7 months back, giving the power of reservation of sub-castes to states, Telangana was the first state which announced in the assembly that we will not do any further job notification or filling up of job vacancies till we finish the categorization," he said.

"So we went through an elaborate process, I am the cabinet sub-committee chairman, we also appointed a retired high court judge as a one-man judicial commission, we went through a very meticulous, systematic, legally valid process and we completed it and today we have issued the necessary orders and the law will be enforced from today in Telangana where all further issues in employment and education will be done as per SC categorization," Reddy added.

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He then said that a meeting has been scheduled on Tuesday to compile all departmental vacancies. "We are also having a meeting tomorrow to call for all the vacancies in all the departments, and we will give a notification in the next few days. In all of them, SC categorization will be applicable," he said.

Telangana Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha, backing the move, said, "We are committed to social justice. This classification or categorisation is not against any community. It is for those communities among the Dalits who are most backward."

(With inputs from agencies)