The Dudekula Noorbasha are a Muslim community found across Telangana and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh whose traditional occupation was cotton-ginning and carding, and turning that carded cotton into mattresses, pillows, quilts, and nawar (cotton-tape) for cots. Backward classes inquiry, including the Anantharaman Commission, records that the community is largely descended from converts drawn from lower social ranks, and that it has historically been recognised as a distinct occupational class within the wider Muslim community.
The community has been on the Central Other Backward Classes list since a 1993 notification, and is placed under BC-B in Telangana's state backward classes list — not BC-E, the category reserved for the state's most economically disadvantaged backward communities. The rise of mechanised cotton mills undercut the community's core craft over the twentieth century, and that economic decline, layered on top of long-standing social exclusion, is the basis on which successive commissions have repeatedly classified the community as both socially and educationally backward.
Today we are asking the state to honour a promise it already put in writing.
The Dudekula Noorbasha community traces its traditional occupation to cotton-ginning, carding, and the making of mattresses, pillows, and quilts, along with nawar (cotton-tape) weaving. For generations this craft was the community's main source of income and its social identity.
The community carries different names in different Indian states, all rooted in the same cotton-carding trade. In Telugu the name Dudekula literally means "cotton cleaner" — dudi (cotton) and ekuta (cleaning). In Hindi- and Urdu-speaking states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, the same community is recorded as Naddaf — an Arabic word meaning "a cotton-carder" — and also as Mansoori. Pinjara, Dhunia, and Behna are further regional names carried by the same occupational community elsewhere in India. These are dialectal variations of one community, not different communities — a fact reflected in how several state OBC lists group Naddaf, Mansoori, Pinjara, and Dhunia together as synonyms of a single caste.
Historical inquiry into the community, including the Anantharaman Commission, found that most members descend from converts drawn from lower social ranks, and that the community has historically been recognised as a distinct occupational class within the wider Muslim community.
The arrival of mechanised cotton mills hit this trade hard. As factory-ginned cotton and machine-made bedding displaced hand-carded work, the community's core livelihood eroded, deepening the economic hardship that already accompanied its social exclusion.
That combination — social distance from both sides, and a traditional craft undercut by industrialisation — is exactly why successive backward classes inquiries have flagged the community as both socially and educationally backward and recommended it for protective classification.
We wish to place one matter before the government with humility, but also with clarity. In Telangana's state backward classes list, our community is placed under BC-B. We have not been included in BC-E — the category set aside for backward communities in the greatest economic distress.
By the very criteria the government itself applies to decide BC-E eligibility, our community qualifies. Yet, to our understanding, it was intentionally kept out of that category — not overlooked by oversight, but left out by choice. We say this plainly, and ask that this choice be reconsidered.
We say this without any wish to diminish another community's claim, only to describe our own. By almost every measure that these very commissions have recorded — a traditional livelihood eroded by mechanisation, generations kept at social distance from communities on both sides, and a standard of living that remains among the most modest in the state — our circumstances sit closer to BC-E than our present listing reflects.
The consequence reaches our children directly. Many of them study with sincerity and diligence, and qualify well on merit, yet find opportunities reserved under BC-E quietly out of reach — not for want of effort, but because of where the community has been placed on this list. A young person's hard-earned education should open a door, not stop at one that was never meant to be closed to them.
We raise this respectfully, and ask only that the classification be reviewed against the community's lived, and continuing, economic reality.
The national Backward Classes Commission under B.P. Mandal set the criteria still used to define socially and educationally backward classes in India. This is the framework that later let a 1993 central government notification place the Dudekula community on the Central OBC list — Entry 43 — where it remains today, alongside its BC-B listing in Telangana's own state list.
The Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee's national review found Muslims lagging on almost every socio-economic indicator, on a par with or behind Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on several measures — the evidence base every later, more focused inquiry has built on. The Dudekula Noorbasha community recognises this pattern directly: a traditional livelihood eroded by mechanisation and a standard of living closer to that of Scheduled Castes than its present listing reflects — exactly the disparity Sachar's data traced for Muslims nationwide.
The National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities under Justice Ranganath Mishra recommended 15% reservation in government jobs and education for religious minorities — 10% earmarked for Muslims alone — and, as a fallback, an 8.4% sub-quota for minorities within the existing 27% OBC quota. It also recommended deleting Para 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 altogether, so that Dalit converts to Islam and Christianity — barred from Scheduled Caste status because that Order still confines it to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists — would qualify for the same protection as their Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist counterparts.
The (then undivided) Andhra Pradesh government ordered a dedicated cooperative federation for the Noorbasha/Dudekula community — a body meant to plan and deliver welfare and livelihood programmes specifically for us.
Full order available Read G.O.Ms.No.125 (PDF)Chaired by Prof. Amitabh Kundu, this committee found rural Muslim OBC households spending only marginally less per month than rural Hindu OBC households (roughly ₹214 against ₹222, on the survey's base-year measure) — poverty on par with other OBCs, but without matching outcomes elsewhere. It urged that the most backward Muslim sub-groups be pulled toward Scheduled-Caste-equivalent protection and that minority welfare and financial-inclusion programmes be intensified rather than left to stall.
Full report available Read the Kundu Committee (Post-Sachar Evaluation) Report (PDF)The state Commission of Inquiry under retired IAS officer G. Sudheer, in a report running over 300 pages, found more than 82% of Telangana's Muslim population already fell within backward-class categories, and that a further section was severely deprived by the standards used in the Indra Sawhney case. It recommended raising Muslim reservation to 12% (a floor of at least 9%), and separately recommended some communities be considered for Scheduled Caste inclusion. The state cabinet accepted the report and cleared a 12% bill in 2017 — but legal challenges have kept actual reservation frozen at 4% since.
Full report available Read the Sudheer Commission Report (PDF)The state's own caste survey — covering over 3.54 crore people — found Muslims make up 12.56% of Telangana's population, of which 10.08% fall under OBC, with only 2.48% of Muslims outside the OBC category altogether. Backward Classes overall, including Muslims, were found to be 56.33% of the state. Hard, current data reaffirming that sub-categorised, occupation-specific welfare support — the kind G.O.125 was meant to deliver — is overdue, not a favour being asked for.
The Union government's three-member Commission of Inquiry, headed by former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, was constituted in October 2022 to examine whether Scheduled Caste status can be extended to Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity — effectively re-examining the same question the Ranganath Mishra Commission raised in 2007. The J.A.C.'s own Shaikh Sattar Sir personally submitted a representation to the Commission, setting out that the Ranganath Mishra Commission's recommendations for the Dudekula Muslim community and other backward castes remain unimplemented to this day. The Commission's tenure was last extended by an April 2026 government notification, from 11 April to 10 June 2026. Press reports on 12 June 2026 said the report had been completed and was being formatted for official submission, expected within days — but as of this writing there is no confirmed record of formal submission to the Central Government, nor any Gazette notification of a further extension beyond 10 June 2026.
Hon'ble Shaikh Sattar Sahab submitting the J.A.C.'s representation to the Justice K.G. Balakrishnan Commission of Inquiry.
The 13 September 1993 Gazette of India (Ministry of Welfare Resolution) first notified the Common Central List of OBCs, incorporating both the Mandal Commission's report and the States' own lists — the Andhra Pradesh common list includes entry 43 covering "Dudekula or Noorbash" under Group B. The 11 August 2016 Gazette (Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment Resolution) later carried these entries forward into the newly formed Telangana state's own OBC list — entry 86(ii) there lists "Dudekula or Noorbash" among the Muslim castes/communities recognised for Telangana. Both gazettes are reproduced below for reference.
Full gazette available Read the 1993 Gazette (PDF) Full gazette available Read the 2016 Gazette (PDF)Issued on the representation of the Rastra Noorbasha/Doodekula Muslim Samkshema Sangham, this order constituted a dedicated cooperative federation headquartered at Hyderabad, mirroring the federations already built for other backward classes.
The order set out a working board — a chairman and directors elected from primary Dudekula welfare cooperative societies, alongside official directors from BC Welfare, the Minorities Finance Corporation, Industries, Municipal Administration, Finance, and Cooperation departments — with District Minorities Welfare Officers serving as executive directors on the ground.
The Registrar of Cooperative Societies was directed to register the federation and approve its bye-laws. Sixteen years on, that registration — and the elected board, the district-level machinery, and the programmes it was meant to plan and deliver — have not materialised.
Without waiting for the federation the 2010 order promised, the community organised itself — from the village level upward — so that the moment the government acts, there is already a working structure to receive it.
The community has built, on its own, the exact grassroots-to-state structure that a functioning federation would need to work through. What is missing is not organisation on our side — it is registration and action on the government's side.
Alongside building the association from the village up, the J.A.C. has personally presented representations to Telangana ministers, seeking implementation of G.O.Ms.No.125 and constitution of the promised federation.
Telangana is organised into 33 districts and 584 mandals. The table below lists every district with its number of mandals — the same district-by-district, mandal-by-mandal footprint the State JAC is building village committees across.
| # | District | Mandals | # | District | Mandals |
|---|
Total: 33 districts · 584 mandals across Telangana state.
Other backward-class cooperative federations route subsidised loans and margin-money assistance to their communities through the state's BC and Minorities finance corporations. Without a registered federation, Dudekula Noorbasha artisans and small traders have had no dedicated channel into these schemes for sixteen years.
The federation was meant to plan and implement programmes for the community's "all-round development." None have been designed, funded, or delivered — while the mechanised-mill pressure on cotton-ginning and bedding work that the community depends on has only continued.
With District Minorities Welfare Officers never activated as Executive Directors, the community has had no institutional point of contact at district level in Jagtial or elsewhere — pushing every grievance into ad hoc representations, RTIs, and court petitions instead of a standing welfare structure.
The order envisioned primary Dudekula welfare cooperative societies feeding into the federation. Without registration, no such network of primary societies has been built, so there is no formal base from which artisans can pool resources, bargain collectively, or access schemes meant for cooperative members.
Comparable BC and minority cooperative federations in Telangana receive annual state budget allocations for share capital, subsidies, and staffing. Every year without registration has been a year the community's federation was absent from that budgeting exercise entirely.
Mandal, Sachar, Mishra, Kundu, and the Sudheer Commission have each, in turn, reconfirmed the community's backwardness. Sixteen years of confirming evidence have not converted a 2010 order into a functioning institution.
No official cost-benefit or financial-loss assessment of the non-implementation of G.O.Ms.No.125 has been published by the government. The items above describe what the order promised and what has not been delivered, rather than a rupee figure — a formal quantification is itself one of the things the community is asking the government to commission.