New Delhi: After being caught on the wrong foot in the Bihar polls in 2015, when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comment on reviewing the reservation policy sent the BJP into a tailspin and ultimately cost it dearly, with crucial elections looming in states like Assam and West Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday that there will be no change in the policy on reservations for dalits.
Terming it “injustice” to call Ambedkar only a messiah of Dalits, the PM said that he was the voice of all marginalised sections and was a “Vishwa Manav” (global personality) and likened him to American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King.
Delivering the Ambe-dkar Memorial Lecture, he said: “Nothing has ever happened to reservations for Dalits, tribals when we are in power... When Vajpayeeji became PM, a campaign was run saying quotas will be abolished. He was PM for two terms and nothing happened..”
Modi says opponents are spreading lies, confusion
Asserting that quotas were the “right” of Dalits and the underprivileged that nobody could snatch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “As I had said earlier, even if Ambedkar appears today, (even) he cannot snatch this right of yours. What are we before Babasaheb?”
In the run-up to the Bihar polls, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said the reservations policy needed a review and even suggested a “non-political committee” be set up to examine who needs the benefit of reservations and for how long.
The BJP had to later issue numerous clarifications on the matter and its opponents, the JD(U) and RJD, did not let go of a single opportunity to score several brownie points, thus leading to their victory at the hustings in Bihar.
Laying the foundation stone for the Ambedkar National Memorial here Monday, the PM targeted his opponents, accusing them of “spreading confusion and lies” on the issue and rued that while it “serves their politics”, such things “weaken” the social fabric of the nation.
Terming it an “injustice” to call Dr Ambedkar only a messiah of dalits, the PM said he was the voice of all marginalised sections and was a “Vishwa Manav” (global citizen), likening him to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Training his guns on his political opponents, Mr Modi said it was “indeed difficult to digest defeat”, a swipe at the Congress which fared poorly in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
