A.P. High Court Strikes Down 34% BC Quota in Local Bodies | CLAT 2027

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 02 OCTOBER 2026

Andhra Pradesh High Court sets aside 34% BC quota in local bodies for breaching the 50% ceiling

On Thursday, 1 October 2026, a Division Bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court set aside two Government Orders that had granted reservation to Backward Classes (BCs) in the State’s local bodies. The Bench, comprising Chief Justice Lisa Gill and Justice Challa Gunaranjan, struck down G.O. 105 and G.O. 1065, which provided 34% reservation to BCs in Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) and 33.33% reservation in Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). The Court held that these quotas exceeded the 50% ceiling on total reservations laid down by the Supreme Court, a principle that lies at the heart of Indian reservation jurisprudence.

Why the quotas fell: the 50% ceiling

The constitutional anchor of the judgment is the 50% ceiling on reservations, first firmly articulated by a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), the celebrated Mandal Commission case. The Court there held that reservations under Article 16(4) should, as a rule, not exceed 50% of the available seats, so as to balance the mandate of equality of opportunity against the guarantee of formal equality under Articles 14 and 16(1). By granting 34% to BCs over and above the quotas already extended to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the impugned Government Orders pushed the aggregate figure past this threshold, rendering them constitutionally unsustainable.

The ‘triple test’ and the data problem

The High Court directed the State to revisit the BC percentage keeping in view Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (2022), and to proceed only after collecting data in compliance with Vikas Kishanrao Gawali v. State of Maharashtra (2021). In Gawali, the Supreme Court laid down the ‘triple test’ for OBC reservation in local bodies: first, the State must set up a dedicated Commission to conduct a rigorous empirical inquiry into the backwardness of local bodies; second, it must specify the proportion of reservation warranted; and third, the total reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs together must not exceed 50% of the total seats. The Andhra Pradesh Bench found that the empirical data drawn from the State’s ‘unified family survey’ could not form the basis of a valid BC reservation declaration.

Elections cannot wait

Significantly, the Court directed the State Government and the State Election Commission (SEC) to commence PRI and ULB elections, preferably within six weeks from 1 October. It held that the existing electoral rolls on the qualifying date cannot be affected by a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and cannot be cited as a reason to postpone elections. On the delimitation of municipalities, the Bench clarified that neither the Census Act, 1948 nor the Census Rules, 1990 prohibit the State from undertaking it. The ruling thus reinforces the constitutional value of timely local-self-government elections, protected by the fixed five-year term of panchayats under Article 243E and the independent authority of the SEC under Article 243K.