BENGALURU: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) SC Morcha president Lal Singh Arya on Thursday exuded confidence that the Scheduled Caste community is on the party’s side and will usher the ruling party in Karnataka for the second consecutive term.
“In Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh elections, the BJP won by a big margin because the party is working for respect and development for the SC community”, he said, adding that in Karnataka too, the double engine government will follow the same path for the community.
He said that the party gives reservation on Constitutional grounds and not on basis of religion. “Recently, the BJP government increased the reservation of Scheduled Caste by 2 per cent and of Scheduled Tribes (STs) by 4 per cent. Even the Dalits, who were deprived of benefits earlier, have been classified, not on the basis of religion, but on the basis of the Constitution”, the BJP SC Morcha chief said.
He said that the erstwhile Congress government gave reservation on the basis of religion. “Congress had given 4 per cent reservation on the basis of religion in Karnataka. But BJP did the work of giving reservation to other poor and backward people on Constitutional basis and not on religious grounds”, he said.
He also hit out at state Congress chief D K Shivakumar for opposing the scrapping of 4 per cent Muslim reservation and said that the party he belongs to is anti-reservation, anti-Constitutional and anti-Ambedkar. “The BJP’s ideology is that the poor should get equal rights, so we feel that we have done the work of providing benefits to the poor which they were not getting. The SC Morcha has done 10,000 conferences with Scheduled Castes in 41 districts. If people were against BJP, no one would have showed up at the conference”, he said.
“A large number of people are coming with BJP and the main reason behind that is Modi ji’s welfare schemes. The BJP’s devotion to the Constitution and unwavering faith and that is the reason that a large number of people will come with the BJP”, he added.
“We have fielded candidates on such large number of seats, every time there is some or the other change, but Congress is scared. Where it wins comfortably, it means there is a fear in the Congress that the BJP is coming again, so it is not able to release the list”, he said. (ANI)