Cong unsheathes double-edged sword on Gurjar agitation
As the Gurjar protests looks likely to continue till the Rajasthan assembly polls, the opposition Congress has adopted a two-pronged strategy to tackle the community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status
By TNN |
NEW DELHI: As the Gurjar protests looks likely to continue till the Rajasthan assembly polls, the opposition Congress has adopted a two-pronged strategy to tackle the community���s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. While the Congress officially remains ambivalent on the thorny reservation demand, it is letting its Gurjar leadership support the cause.
Thus, almost a fortnight into the Gurjar agitation, Mr Sachin Pilot, MP from Dausa where Gurjar women have been squatting on railway tracks for the past few days, has demanded that the nation���s reservation policy be reviewed to see who has really benefited from the measure.
���For 60 years, the reservation policy has continued; the time has come for Indian political parties to rethink the criteria for reservations. It is important to see what other parameters can be evolved so that anyone who really needs reservations gets it,��� Mr Pilot said. The MP said that a ���vast majority��� of Gurjars lived in poverty and were nomadic with little access to education.
He described the police firings on Gurjars, which claimed over 60 lives, as ���state-sponsored terrorism��� and argued that if the BJP had promised reservations to Gurjars in 2003 to get their votes, then it was only natural for them to take to the streets if the promise was not kept. Mr Pilot also indicated that he would convey his point of view on reservations to Congress president Sonia Gandhi soon.
However, the party���s Rajasthan unit chief, C P Joshi, when asked whether Rajasthan Congress backed Mr Pilot���s stance, sought to make a distinction between what an individual leader said and what the Congress as a whole believed. ���Individually leaders can talk to the high command. The party is seized of the problem but the issue is larger and deals with not just Rajasthan but Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and other states,��� Mr Joshi said. This is the line that the All-India Congress Committee has also adopted, while focusing its attack on chief minister Vasundhara Raje for making ���false promises��� to the community.
However, whether this two-pronged approach will benefit the Congress in the coming elections is questionable. This is exemplified by the fact that Mr Pilot���s call for a ���rethink��� on the criteria for reservations has also been put forth by the Jasraj Chopra committee, which was set up by the Rajasthan government last year to look into the question of granting ST status to Gurjars.
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The committee, while turning down the demand, had asked the state government to convey to the Centre that a national dialogue should be started on existing norms for granting ST status to any community. With the committee���s findings the state government had tried to shift the onus of finding a solution to Gurjar problem to the Congress-led Centre. The Congress has indicated that it will have nothing to do with the report.If the Congress��� Gurjar leaders thus find it difficult to back their community���s demand outright, in view of the implications for the Centre, then the party itself is in danger of being identified too closely with the Gurjar cause. It has criticised Ms Raje very strongly for firing on protesters, and with its Gurjar leaders now speaking up for the reservation cause, Congress risks alienating the numerically and economically stronger ST Meena community and others who are opposed to ST status for Gurjars.
It is a very fine balance that the Congress has tried to strike in Rajasthan and seems to be hoping that a larger discontent with the BJP government in Rajasthan will bring its two approaches together in victory.
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