Telangana govt appoints retired IAS officer as head of 'dedicated BC commission'

Hyderabad, Nov 4 (PTI) The Telangana government on Monday appointed retired IAS officer Busani Venkateshwara Rao as one-man commission to conduct an empirical inquiry for identification of backward classes for the purpose of reservations in local bodies.

The commission should submit a comprehensive report to the state government as expeditiously as possible, preferably, within one month, a Government Order (GO) said.

The state government had constituted the Telangana Commission for BCs and designated it as dedicated commission for BCs enumeration to determine reservations in local bodies.

However, the state high court has recently directed the government to consider the request of a petitioner, among others, to constitute a dedicated commission for the implementation of the orders of the Supreme Court in a case for the purpose of providing reservations for the OBCs in the ensuing local body elections, in place of the BC commission.

On consideration of the high court orders and having regard to the Constitutional mandate under Article 340 and the apex court's orders, the government decided to appoint a dedicated commission, the GO said.

It said the government appoints Venkateshwara Rao as dedicated commission for "conducting a contemporaneous rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness qua local bodies within Telangana in order to specify the proportion of reservations to be provisioned local body-wise..." PTI SJR SJR KH