Tuesday, May 27, 2003
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By Neena Vyas
Back from Jaipur where the BJP adopted a resolution on this issue, Mr. Naidu briefed the Prime Minister on this today and requested that the Government consider the suggestion to set up such a commission. Later he told the press that Mr. Vajpayee had promised a Cabinet decision on this very soon. Mr. Naidu pointed out that the party itself had adopted a resolution favouring reservation for the economically weak among the forward castes at its national executive committee meeting in 1985 in Bhopal. "Right from the Jana Sangh (the earlier political avatar of the BJP) days the party has been committed to this," he said. However, he did not accept a suggestion that the BJP was rushing into this as a reaction to the announcement by the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, favouring 14 per cent reservation for the poor among the forward castes and asking the Centre to consider this. While it is now more than obvious that both the Congress and the BJP are busy scoring political points with an eye on the Rajasthan Assembly elections later this year, it is also clear that the BJP was caught off-guard on this issue which surfaced when the BJP State chief, Vasundhara Raje, met with persistent protests from the Social Justice Front (SJF), a group advocating reservation for the forward communities. How seriously the BJP views this development in Rajasthan can be gauged from the fact that some of the SJF activists were taken by the party general secretary, Pramod Mahajan, to meet the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, today. In response to questions, Mr. Naidu admitted that a constitutional amendment was needed to reopen the reservation issue. When the new commission was set up it would consider reservation for the poor among the forward castes but the existing reservation for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and the backward classes would not be disturbed. "This cannot be an issue limited to Rajasthan, it is an issue which concerns the entire country and some sort of political consensus would have to be reached." To a question he also made it clear that his party was not in favour of reopening the "creamy layer" issue for the SCs/STs and backward classes. (Parliament had overturned a Supreme Court judgment suggesting that reservation for SCs/STs and BCs should be restricted to the poor and needy among them, keeping out the rich and powerful among them.) If the issue is taken up it would also mean getting round the maximum limit of 50 per cent for all reservation imposed by the Supreme Court and accepted by the Government and all political parties. Mr. Naidu was asked why the BJP did not withdraw support to the V.P. Singh Government on the reservation issue, why it had not insisted on reservation for the poor among the forward castes at the time when the Mandal Commission recommendations for the backward castes were implemented, and had instead withdrawn support on the Ayodhya issue. His answer was: the "choice was ours".
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