Top court upholds Telangana High Court’s stay on 67% total reservation plan for local body polls
The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to intervene in a plea by the Telangana government challenging the High Court’s interim stay on its decision to expand reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local body elections beyond the constitutionally recognised 50 per cent ceiling.
The Telangana government had sought to implement 42 per cent reservation for OBCs, which would have taken the overall quota — including those for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — to around 67 per cent. The state argued that the move reflected a “unanimous policy decision” backed by all political parties.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the state, told a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta that the High Court’s stay order lacked adequate reasoning.
“A unanimous resolution of all parties supports this policy. How can it be stayed without pleadings? Barring the first few pages, no reasons have been given for the stay,” Singhvi argued.
He also contended that there was a “misconception” that the Supreme Court’s landmark 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment imposed a rigid 50 per cent cap on reservations. “The judgment itself allows for exceptional circumstances where this limit can be breached,” Singhvi said.
However, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners who had challenged the state’s decision, defended the High Court’s interim stay, citing precedents that reinforced the 50 per cent ceiling.
“The order we challenged increased reservation to 42 per cent for OBCs, pushing total quotas beyond 60 per cent,” he said, referencing the 2010 K. Krishna Murthy ruling, in which a Constitution Bench of the apex court reaffirmed the limit.
The Telangana High Court, in its order last month delivered by Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin, had observed that the increase appeared to breach the Supreme Court’s “triple test” for implementing OBC reservations in local bodies.
The triple test requires:
1. Setting up a dedicated commission to conduct a quantifiable empirical study on OBC representation.
2. Determining the proportion of reservations based on that study.
3. Ensuring that total reservations for SCs, STs, and OBCs combined do not exceed 50 per cent.
Finding that the Telangana government had not satisfied these criteria, the High Court stayed the three government orders related to the new quotas until it delivers a final verdict on their constitutional validity.
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