Centre will pass OBC bill, says Shah
BENGALURU: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Tuesday promised that the Centre would ensure the passage of the bill granting Constitutional status to National Commission for Backward Classes in Parliament, even as he accused chief minister Siddaramaiah of being interested “only in the welfare of minority communities and not other backward classes (OBCS)”.
Addressing an OBC convention at Kaginele town in Karnataka’s Haveri district, about 350km from the state capital, he alleged, “Chief minister Siddaramaiah calls himself AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes and Dalits), but he is only worried about the welfare of minorities and not any other community.
Shah said the Congress had created an obstacle in passing the bill in the Rajya Sabha, demand- ing induction of an OBC representative in the Commission.
“However much the Congress tries to oppose or create an obstacle, the Narendra Modi government will pass the bill in both houses of Parliament.this is our decision and we will see to it that the community gets justice. BJP takes all communities along and it is certain it will come to power in this state. I want to assure you the BJP will uphold the dignity of the OBC community,” he added.
Shah said the choice for the people in the upcoming elections, to be held on May 12, was “simple”. “On the one hand, there is the BJP, which is moving ahead on Modi’s call for ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’. On the other, you have the Congress which is div- ing the society and working on the British’s ‘divide and rule’ policy,” Shah alleged, in an apparent reference to the Siddaramaiah government’s move to grant religious status to the Lingayats.
Speaking on farmers’ suicides, Shah claimed “a majority of those who took their lives belonged to the OBC community”.
State urban development minister R Roshan Baig responded by saying that the BJP was showing its desperation.
“Shah does not even realise that Siddaramaiah belongs to the Kuruba caste, which is categorised as backward. In its desperation since it knows that we (Congress) will form the next government in the state, the BJP is trying to stoke communal passions and going back to its Hindutva ideology,” Baig said.
This was Shah’s fifth round of campaign in Karnataka, where the assembly polls are scheduled for May 12 and counting of votes would take place on May 15.