Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi hail the same OBC icon

The presidents of both BJP and Congress on Tuesday sought to honour 16th century poet Kanakadasa who has become an icon for the Kuruba (shepherd) community in Karnataka, as the two parties competed for the votes of the other backward castes in the state.
The OBCs, comprising nearly 1,000 sub-castes, form the biggest chunk of Karnataka’s electorate. The Kuruba community, to which chief minister Siddaramaiah belongs, is considered to be the biggest OBC group, accounting for about 7% of the state’s population of 6.5 crore.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, accompanied by Siddaramaiah, garlanded a statue of Kanakadasa. He also visited the Kanaka Gurupeeta at Harihara, a mutt that Siddaramaiah helped establish several years ago.


Within hours of Gandhi’s visit, BJP chief Amit Shah arrived at Kaginele, the birthplace of Kanakadasa, to address a convention of other backward castes. Shah, accompanied by his party’s CM candidate, BS Yeddyurappa, said the Congress had no real concern for the OBCs but indulged in the British-style divide and rule policy.

Shah said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi says sab ka saath sab ka vikas (development with all, for all). But the Congress, like the British, wants to break the society up.”

He raised the issue of the bill pending in the Rajya Sabha to give constitutional status to the National Backward Classes Commission. “The Congress did not do it. Narendra Modiji brought this bill to give dignity and status to the other backward castes. The Congress stalled this in the Rajya Sabha on the grounds that a minority member had to be part of it,” Shah said.

“The BJP’s philosophy is to take all communities forward,” he said.