New Delhi: After receiving negative feedback from its core vote-bank — the upper castes — over its overdrive to woo the Dalits and OBCs, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sent out a message to Thakurs, Brahmins and the Vaishyas — “do not make the same mistake you did in 2014” by not backing Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP for a second term at power. Modi government’s recent measure to bring in a legislation to overturn the Supreme Court’s order on the SC/ST Act seems to have triggered the dissent among the saffron party’s core vote-bank, which feels that the apex court’s order had infact made sure that the Act was not misused against them.
BJP top brass, including party chief Amit Shah , Arun Jaitley, Ravishankar Prasad, Nirmala Sitharaman and others, held a meeting on Tuesday apparently to discuss the issue. In an indication that the issue could create problems for the BJP, former Union minister and senior leader Kalraj Mishra asked the government managers to reconsider its legislation against the apex court's order.
Sources disclosed that the BJP top brass has been receiving strong reaction on the issue, with party leaders complaining and urging that the BJP leadership needs to address the issue at the earliest. Sensing the gravity of the issue, the saffron party has activated its leadership and also its social media team to keep an eye on such dissent and also try to placate the upper caste votebank, which seems to be miffed over aggressive wooing of the Dalits and the OBCs.
This newspaper had reported recently how saffron party’s poll managers in poll bound state of Madhya Pradesh are desperately trying to assuage Brahmin and
Vaishyas, who together account for nearly 10 per cent of the total population and are miffed with the ruling BJP over the same issue.
In an embarrassment to the Shivraj Singh Chouhan led BJP in the state, Rajput organisation ‘Karni Sena,’ took the responsibility of the incident when a shoe was hurled at the chief minister, for which he had blamed the opposition Congress. Karni Sena had organised a event in Gwalior against the government’s legislation on the SC/ST Act. The BJP leadership has asked its senior leaders in all states, particularly those in the ‘Hindi heartland’ to hold parleys with groups and representatives of the upper castes who are miffed and “make them understand” about the electoral compulsions to “reach out” to the OBCs and Dalits.
