Hyderabad: Amid a heated exchange between the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level over the issue of reservations, the Congress party has made more ammunition to it in Telangana to make it its election plank.
The chief minister and state Congress president A. Revanth Reddy while echoing the stand of the party’s high command that the “abki baar 400 paar” slogan of BJP was aimed at scrapping reservations if voted to power again, simultaneously raised his voice at the election rallies the state government’s commitment to hike reservations for backward classes based on their population and also step up budgetary allocation for them.
It may be recalled that the Telangana Assembly had already passed a resolution to take up door-to-door household caste survey with a view to enhance socio-economic, educational, employment and political opportunities targeted for the benefit of backward classes. The Congress manifesto in the last Assembly elections also promised an annual budget of Rs 20,000 crore, totalling Rs 1 lakh crore in the five year term of the government for the benefit of BCs.
The government has also commissioned a draft Bill to be tabled in the House to give statutory cover to benefits for backward classes based on the survey.
The trigger for the Congress in going all out to expose the alleged intention of the BJP to scrap reservations was a media conference addressed by Revanth Reddy on Saturday (April 27).
Blaming the Modi-led BJP for trying to capture power with a brute majority of 400 plus in the next term of Parliament solely to attack constitutional guarantees on reservations, Reddy said the Congress in the state was committed to implementing political and other reservations for BCs at enhanced percentages as promised by its leader Rahul Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in states where the party was in power. The party will strive for relaxing the cap on reservations after coming to power, he said.
He said the BJP was implementing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideology of opposing reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
He recalled that the RSS had opposed reservations for OBCs at the national level after a commission headed by B.P. Mandal had recommended 27% reservation for the section based on population.
The commission, which was constituted after a Presidential Order was issued in 1978, surveyed 3,000 castes of BCs across the country and fixed their population at 52% in its report. The V.P. Singh government at the Centre issued orders implementing the report in 1990 but the RSS stood by other castes to oppose the report and the orders.
A nine-judge Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court also approved a 27% quota for OBCs while continuing a 15% and 7.5% reservation for SCs and STs respectively without affecting the vertical divide between social groups in the quota system already in vogue.
It was immediately rumoured that the BJP got in touch with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who was in Hyderabad on Sunday for the inauguration of an international school professed to Hindu ideology to counter Reddy’s claims. By coincidence, a video also surfaced on social media at the same time showing a RSS meeting that discussed the scrapping of reservations.
Bhagwat told the gathering at the school function that false propaganda was launched against the organisation as such a meeting never took place. He said the video in circulation was generated by artificial intelligence and expressed concern at the misuse of social media.
He said RSS was never against Constitutional guarantees on reservations. The reservations should continue as long as social inequalities exist and the RSS will support them, he had said.
The video was immediately replaced by another old one where the BJP discussed a strategy to secure a brute majority in the ongoing elections to enable the party to hike reservations.
Then the Congress went on an overdrive claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought the reservations issue to the fore at his election rallies in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to implement the RSS agenda.
As part of a nationwide campaign to expose the BJP, the party was said to have mandated Revanth Reddy and senior leaders like Jairam Ramesh to pledge its commitment to protect reservations and even enhance them if elected to power.
Reacting to Modi’s speech at Banswara in Rajasthan that Congress was determined to steal from OBC quota to provide reservations to Muslims based on religion, Reddy said Modi, Amit Shah, Ambani and Adani combine were trying to fulfil the RSS objective by 2025, when RSS would celebrate its centenary of founding.
The present elections are a battlefield to launch a surgical strike on BCs and OBCs with the aim to disrupt the social fabric of the country, Reddy said. “The RSS thought process is to show India totally as a Hindu society by removing reservations,” he added.
Reddy accused former chief minister and president of Bharat Rashtra Samiti K. Chandrasekhar Rao of being hand in glove with the BJP which was evident from his stoic silence. Even the BJP leaders in the state were tight lipped on whether the party will not withdraw reservations after the elections.
Backward classes welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar has given a call to people to form joint action committees, like in the struggle for Statehood to Telangana, to protect reservations.
He said the RSS chief had spoken about reservations as he felt the anger of people on scrapping them. He warned the BJP leaders that they will incur the wrath of people if they tinkered with reservations.
