Ensure 50% SHOs belong to SC/ST community: Apna Dal

GORAKHPUR: Eyeing Dalit votes ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP ally Apna Dal has demanded the UP government to ensure that police stations in every UP district had 50% SC/ST station house officers (SHOs). It also said that either the DM or the SP of each district should be from the backward community.

“The dalits and backwards had supported us with full strength and helped in forming the government in 2014 and 2017,” said Apna Dal national president Ashish Patel told reporters on the sidelines of a workers’ conclave in Sidhdharthanagar.

“BJP president Amit Shah had prepared a bouquet of flowers (by bringing the dalits to the BJP). That bouquet of flowers needs to strengthen further and for this reason our party demands 50% station house officers should be from SC/ST community, so that when they (dalits) visit these places (police stations) they are heard,” he said.

Addressing the conclave, Union minister Anupriya Patel said the alliance between Apna Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party would remain intact in 2019 too.

Lashing out at non BJP governments, the leader said the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party did nothing for SC/STs and her party was the only political outfit which was striving hard for betterment of marginalised, oppressed backward community. She said Sidhdharthanagar was among eight UP districts which were identified for focussed development by the Niti Ayog. Anupriya said the party would run a statewide campaign to strengthen Apna Dal to fulfill the dream of its founder Sone Lal Patel.