Lok Sabha Polls: BJP banking on Madigas to win SC reserved seats in Telangana

There are three SC reserved seats- Peddapalli, Warangal and Nagarkurnool, in the State and most of the time it was won by the Congress or the BRS.

Hyderabad: The BJP, which has a very negligible presence among the Scheduled Caste(SC) communities in the State, is banking on madigas to win SC reserved seats in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls. The party leadership believes that the setting up of a high level committee by the union government to examine the administrative steps that can be taken to safeguard the interests of Scheduled Caste communities like the Madigas and their sub-categorisation in the SC reservation, would help the party in gaining the support of these communities in the Lok Sabha polls.

There are three SC reserved seats- Peddapalli, Warangal and Nagarkurnool, in the State and most of the time it was won by the Congress or the BRS. The BJP never performed well in these seats. In fact, its candidates lost deposits in these seats in the last few elections. However, this time the party leadership feels that since the union government has set up a panel to look into SC categorisation and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured to resolve the issue at the earliest, the madiga communities would be voting for BJP candidates.

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With Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS) founder president Manda Krishna Madiga throwing his weight behind the Saffron party, the BJP leadership is reportedly confident that it would bag at least one SC reserved seat this time.

The Congress has allotted all the three tickets to non-Madigas, BRS has given one ticket to the Madiga community, whereas BJP has allotted two seats to madigas. Congress fielded Mala leaders Mallu Ravi in Nagarkurnool and G Vamsi Krishna in Peddapalli, and nominated Kadiyam Kavya, belonging to Byndla, an SC sub caste, as its candidate in Warangal. BRS fielded Mala leaders RS Praveen Kumar and Koppula Eshwar from Nagarkurnool and Peddapally, respectively and M Sudhir Kumar, a Madiga, from Warangal. Whereas, the BJP had fielded two Madiga leaders — Aroori Ramesh (Warangal) and P Bharat (Nagarkurnool).

The BJP leaders felt that the madiga communities would support them in the polls as the party was fulfilling their long standing demand of SC categorisation.

Numerically, Madigas constitute a significant population in Telangana. As per the 2011 Census, Telangana’s SC population stands at 54,32,680 with Madigas comprising 32,33,642, whereas Malas numbered at 15,27,143. Even the integrated household survey conducted by the then Telangana government in 2014 put the SC population at 63,60,158 which comes to around 18 per cent of the total population of the State.