The Supreme Court rejected the AP government’s plea to restore the 34% quota for Backward Classes in local bodies

General view of New Delhi High Court. | Photo credit: The Hindu

The Supreme Court on Friday (October 9, 2026) dismissed the Andhra Pradesh government’s appeal against the Supreme Court’s order quashing its decision to restore 34% reservation for Backward Classes in local bodies. The court upheld an Oct. 1 verdict that the state failed to present the empirical data necessary to justify exceeding the 50% reservation limit.

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Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi argued before a bench of Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu that the state’s decision was supported by demographic data and other empirical material, but the Supreme Court erred in concluding that it did not meet the requirements earlier laid down by the apex court for violating the 50% reservation limit.

The court is not convinced

However, the Bench remained unconvinced, noting that the figures obtained from the family reunification survey were not sufficient to justify an increased quota as there was no specific empirical assessment of backwardness and representation in local bodies.

“You show us how these data can be considered. This is a unified family survey. Under what law is this done? A very sensible approach by the Supreme Court,” the Bench observed while dismissing the challenge.

In its appeal against the October 1 verdict, the state government sought to distinguish the 2026 exercise from the reservation framework scrapped six years ago, arguing that the quota was fixed anew on the basis of a statewide survey, verification with gram and sabh departments, local body data and findings of an independent special committee.

Violates the 50% cap

State-wise, the survey put the backward class population at 50.42% across Andhra Pradesh – 48.84% in rural areas and 54.35% in urban areas. However, she claimed that the increased quota was not determined by population alone, but drew on a range of materials gathered during the exercise.

In March 2020, the Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down the then YSR Congress government’s decision to provide 34% reservation for Backward Classes in local bodies after finding that it would increase the combined quota for SC, ST and Backward Classes to 59.85%, much higher than the 50% ceiling prescribed by the Supreme Court. The apex court directed the state to bring the quota up to the overall limit and conduct a detailed, data-driven exercise to ascertain the backwardness.

In its 2021 judgment in Vikas Kishanrao Gawali v. State of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court held that such a reservation requires a contemporaneous and rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and extent of backwardness in relation to local bodies.

The state government tried to restore the increased quota before the local body elections this year. In August, it issued two government orders providing 34% reservation for Backward Classes in rural local bodies and 33.33% in urban local bodies.

On October 1, the Supreme Court struck down the orders to the extent that they pushed the aggregate vertical reservation for SCs, STs and Backward Classes above 50%. Chief Justice Lisa Gill and Justice Challa Gunaranjan rejected the state government’s reliance on the Unified Family Survey as a sufficient basis for declaring a reservation in excess of 50%.

However, the High Court did not rule out the possibility of a higher quota for Backward Classes. It said the state could review the proposal after conducting an empirical exercise mandated by earlier Supreme Court decisions.

Published – 9 Oct 2026 23:02 IST