In an extraordinary move the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted and passed a resolution seeking 33.3 percent reservations for the backward classes including Muslims in the state assembly and legislative council and urged the Union government to amend the constitution to this effect. Initially the resolution talked only of the backward classes but on the insistence of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), word “Muslims” was also added to the resolution. Moving the resolution in the House the Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy said that such a reservations to the backward classes was over due. He expressed confidence that the union government will accept the request at the earliest and give its nod reserving one third of the seats in the state for the backward classes. “Such a resolution has become necessary because despite constituting more than half of the population of the states the BCs have very negligible representation in the state assembly,” the chief minister said. After chief minister accepted the MIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi's demand for explicitly including the name of Muslim community in the resolution, the BJP floor leader G. Kishan Reddy strongly objected to it and did not support the resolution. But all other parties supported the resolution. The leader of opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu said that his party was very happy to extend its support to the resolution. But he recalled that a similar resolution was passed by the House during TDP rule in 1996 but the Central government did not act on it. On his suggestion the resolution amended and one-third reservation was also demanded in parliament. __
