Vijayawada: The Kapu reservation spill-over effect has been gradually spreading to other communities including BCs, OCs, SCs and STs. It has not only triggered caste-based debate in the Telugu states, but is also escalating tensions across communities.
Now, forward communities have also come out protesting against Kapu reservations. OC Association and Arya Vysya Associations in separate letters to AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu have demanded that reservations should not exceed 50 per cent.
They said reservations for Kapus will have serious bearing on the employment and education opportunities of the other forward castes like Reddys, Kammas and Vaisyas, and Brahmins.
Muslim leaders said that they would organise a rally in Vijayawada city soon, to press for 8 per cent reservation on the lines of TS.
Muslim Intellectual Forum convener M. Farooq Shubli said that they would organise a state-level meeting at Vijayawada after taking up an awareness campaign. He said the Muslim population was 7.32 per cent in the state.
Supreme Court judgements have restricted reservations to 50 per cent, observed K. Bala Murali Venkata Subrahmanyam, president, Brahmana Swavalambana Samstha, in a release.
He requested government to restrict reservations within this percentage and said that in the AP; almost 50 per cent of the population belongs to forward castes.
