BRS, Congress, BJP focusing on 31 reserved seats
SNCN ACHARYULU
Hyderabad
The main political parties the BRS, the Congress and the BJP are focussing on reserved Assembly constituencies in Telangana. The ruling BRS and the main opposition Congress are trying to gain the upper hand in reserved Assembly constituencies.
In Telangana, of the 119 Assembly seats 19 are reserved for SCs and 12 are for STs. The number of seats required to form a government is 61 and the number of SC and ST reserved seats is 31.
That means the total number of reserved seats is about 50% of the required number of seats to form a government.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, the BRS won most of the Assembly constituencies reserved for SCs and STs. Of the 31 reserved seats the BRS won 20, the Congress nine and the TDP two seats.
An interesting point is that the Congress won 19 Assembly seats in the 2018 elections and of that nine are reserved ones.
The BJP has already launched programmes named ‘Target 19’ in SC reserved seats and ‘Target 12’ in ST reserved seats. The BJP has also constituted special committees for SC and ST reserved constituencies.
The BRS is now implementing the Dalit Bandhu and Girijana Bandhu schemes for SCs and STs. Even without these schemes, the BRS won a majority of the reserved seats in the 2018 Assembly elections. Now the BRS thinks that it can win more reserved seats in the next Assembly elections.From the time of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, SCs and STs had become the main vote bank of the Congress. Although the BRS won most of the reserved Assembly seats in 2018, the Congress won nine reserved seats indicating that its SC and ST vote bank is intact.
There is an opinion that political consciousness is low among voters of reserved seats than in general seats. The Congress has appointed a convenor in each reserved constituency to focus on voters.
Even though the Centre is implementing various schemes for SCs and STs the BJP may not get political mileage from this as the implementing authority of both the State and Central schemes is the state.
Political observers think that voters in reserved seats may think that Central schemes are actually state schemes as it is implemented by state government officials. The Centre has no machinery to implement schemes for SCs and STs at the state level.
