Significant developments that shaped T’gana politics in 2025

For the Congress government in Telangana, led by A Revanth Reddy, 2025 was a year of consolidation of power, even as it proved a year of mostly setbacks as far as the opposition Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) was concerned.

The year began with the completion of a comprehensive caste survey in the state, launched in late 2024 and wrapped up by January 2025. According to the survey’s findings, other backward classes (OBCs) accounted for 56.33% of the state’s population. Muslims constituted 12.56% of the population, out of whom 10.08% fell under the backward classes category. The survey was tabled in the state assembly on February 4.

Opposition parties— the BRS and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejected the survey as incomprehensive. Moreover, the ruling party’s own member of the legislative council (MLC) Teenmaar Mallana, publicly rejected the survey and burnt a copy of the report on February 5, which led to his suspension from the party on March 1.

Based on the data presented in the report, the state legislature passed two Bills to increase the proportion of reservations in education, employment and local body positions to 42%. The Bills were forwarded to the Centre for inclusion in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, due to the total reservations breaching the 50% cap. Chief minister Revanth Reddy subsequently staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to exert pressure on the Centre in August to expedite the grant of Presidential Assent to the Bills. In the absence of central approval, the state government moved to enhance reservations for backward classes in local bodies to 42% through an executive order. The move faced legal challenges. The state high court stayed the order and the Supreme Court dismissed the state’s appeal against the stay order.

The legal hurdles also delayed the conduct of rural local body elections. With central grants of ₹3,000 crore for gram panchayats set to end by March 2026, the government conceded and went ahead with the elections.

This year, Telangana became the first state to announce the implement the Supreme Court order allowing sub-classification of Scheduled Castes (SCs) for equitable distribution of reservations. In March, the state assembly unanimously passed the Telangana Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservations) Bill. It divided the state’s 59 SC communities into three groups for the implementation of 15% reservation.

In June, the state cabinet expanded to induct three ministers— G Vivek, Adluri Laxman Kumar and Vakiti Srihari. Vivek was placed in charge of the labour, employment, training and factories portfolio, whereas Laxman Kumar was given the minorities welfare portfolio in addition to being placed in charge of Nalgonda district. Vivek and Laxman Kumar both belong to SC communities. Srihari, who belongs to a BC community, was placed in charge of Khammam district and handed the animal husbandry and dairy development portfolio.

Later in the year, in November, a second cabinet expansion took place, which saw the induction of retired Indian cricketer and former captain Mohammed Azharuddin, amid the campaign for the by-election in the Jubilee Hills, which saw the Congress candidate V Naveen Yadav defeat BRS nominee Maganti Sunitha by a margin of nearly 25,000. The by-election was necessitated by the death of incumbent BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath.

Azharuddin became the first Muslim minister in the Revanth Reddy cabinet, amid mounting criticism over the Congress government’s failure to provide Muslim representation for nearly two years.

The Congress victory in the gram panchayat elections proved to be another major boost for the chief minister. Out of 12,727 gram panchayats, Revanth Reddy claimed that Congress and Congress rebels together won 8,335 gram panchayats, accounting for nearly 66% of the total.

According to him, an analysis of the results showed Congress leading in 87 of the 94 Assembly constituencies, with BRS ahead in six and BJP in one.

Towards the end of the year, the ruling party took another strategic decision by merging 27 urban local bodies with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), making it the largest municipal body in the country in terms of both area and population.On December 7, the Congress government completed two years in office. To mark the occasion, it hosted the Telangana Rising Global Summit.

The highlight of the two-day summit was the unveiling of the Telangana Rising Vision 2047 document, which set an ambitious target of transforming Telangana into a $3 trillion economy by 2047, with an interim milestone of $1 trillion by 2034.

However, a major setback for the state government came when their attempt to auction 400 acres of land in the Kancha Gachibowli forest, adjacent to the University of Hyderabad, in March received public backlash, with students raising an uproar, opposition parties registering protests, and finally the Supreme Court directing the state government to restore the forest land where trees had been felled.

As far as the BRS was concerned, the internal revolt led by party president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter, Kalvakuntla Kavitha served as the year’s second-most important development, eclipsed only by party patriarch and former chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’S (KCR) decision to return to active politics towards the end of the year.

However, the state Anti-Corruption Bureau’s issuance of a notice to party working president KT Rama Rao (KTR) and the subsequent submission of a reports by the state vigilance department, the National Dam Safety Authority and a judicial commission headed by Supreme Court judge PC Ghose into alleged irregularities in the Kaleshwaram dam project initiated under KCR’s tenure, which named the former chief minister and former irrigation minister T Harish Rao among others, served as another major challenge for the party.