Lucknow: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Monday accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress of wooing the OBC community for the sake of votes and reiterated the demand for a caste census at the national level.
After paying tribute to BSP founder Kanshi Ram on his death anniversary, Mayawati said that the challenges before the BSP movement have increased due to casteist, narrow-minded, communal, capitalist, and anti-poor forces.
She said, “Along with the misuse of their immense wealth and resources, their tactics can be countered by the BSP only by increasing its unity, dedication, and support base, which was the dream of Kanshi Ram, and the BSP formed the government four times in UP following the same and laid a strong foundation of social change and economic liberation, where everyone got justice.”
The BSP supremo said that casteist and anti-reservation parties or elements, especially the BJP and Congress, are in a race these days to show themselves as the new well-wishers of the OBC community in the wake of the Lok Sabha elections for the sake of votes.
She said, “But the struggle done by Kanshi Ram for the interest and welfare of the OBC and religious minority people, a special part of society, and their constitutional rights along with the Dalits and tribals after Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar is the best and unmatched.”
Mayawati reiterated the demand to conduct a census or survey of OBCs at the UP and national levels and said that those opposing reservations are the same casteist-minded people who continuously conspire to make the reservations of SC and ST categories inactive and ineffective, and their backlog is also not filled. “For this reason, people of ‘Bahujan Samaj’ do not have any role in policy making; it is necessary to change this very sad and worrying situation,” she said.
Targeting the Samajwadi Party (SP), she said that during its regime, the BSP government created many grand and historically important monuments, sites, and parks, as well as many grand universities, colleges, hospitals, and new districts in the honor of Kanshi Ram. “It didn’t go well with the party, and as soon as their government was formed, the SP government took malicious and casteist action and changed the names of many of them,” she said.
