Context: The Telangana Legislative Assembly passed the Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservation) Bill, 2025, paving the way for SC sub-categorisation in reservation.

Background: –

• This legislation follows a Supreme Court verdict supporting SC sub-categorization and affirming states’ rights to enact necessary legislation in this regard.

Key Points

• As per the Bill, the Scheduled Castes will be divided into three categories – Group I will get 1% reservation within the 15% quota for SCs; Group II will get 9% reservation; and Group III will get 5% reservation.
• The Bill has divided 59 SC communities in the state into three groups for implementation of the 15 percent reservation for SCs. It provided one per cent reservation to 15 SC communities categorised as most socially, economically, and educationally disadvantaged/overlooked which formed 3.288 percent of the total SC population in the state.
• Group-II, with 18 communities and comprising 62.748 per cent of the SC population, will be provided 9 per cent reservation and the third category comprising 26 significantly benefitted scheduled castes forming 33.963 per cent of the SC population will be given 5 per cent reservation.

Additional Information

• In 1975, the Punjab issued a notification dividing its 25% SC reservation at that time into two categories. In the first category, seats were reserved solely for the Balmiki and Mazhbi Sikh communities, which were the most backward communities in the state. As a result, they were to be given first preference for any reservations in education and public employment.
• The second category consisted of the rest of the SC communities, which didn’t get this preferential treatment. It was one of the first instances of existing reservations being ‘sub-classified’ by a state to provide benefits to certain communities beyond what was already being offered to scheduled caste communities as a whole.
• While the notification remained in force for nearly 30 years, it ran into legal hurdles when in 2004, a five-judge constitution bench struck down a similar law introduced by Andhra Pradesh in 2000. 
• In ‘E.V. Chinnaiah v State of Andhra Pradesh’, the Supreme Court struck down the Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservations) Act, 2000 for being violative of the right to equality. The law contained an expansive list of scheduled caste communities identified in the state and the quota of reservation benefits provided to each of them.
• On August 1, 2024, In a landmark 6-1 majority ruling, a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that Scheduled Castes do not constitute a socially homogeneous class and can be sub-classified by States for the purpose of providing reservation to the less privileged among them.

Source: The News Minute