JD(U) backs Ramadoss to the hilt over AIIMS fiasco

NEW DELHI: The divide between the pro and anti-reservation camps became sharper here on Monday with the JD(U) breaking ranks with the NDA on Union health and family welfare minister Anbumani Ramadoss’ fight with the AIIMS director, Dr P Venugopal.

The party gave its unstinted support to the Union health minister, asserting that he had become a victim of an “upper caste conspiracy”, and flayed its alliance partner, the BJP, and sections of the Congress for going overboard in backing Dr Venugopal.

“He (Dr Venugopal) seems to have forgotten that he is the director of both pro and anti-reservation doctors and students at AIIMS. There are reports that doctors and students belonging to scheduled caste categories are being discriminated against in the institute,” JD(U) general secretary and spokesperson Shambhu Sharan Shrivastava told reporters here on Monday afternoon.

The stand taken by the JD(U) on the issue is the latest in a series of developments which have seen the party straying from the path charted out by the BJP. While indicating the party’s anxiety to forge an independent identity, it is also aimed at consolidating its hold on its non-Yadav OBC support-base in Bihar.

The JD(U) had in the past refused to toe the BJP line on the proposal to extend the quota regime to unaided higher educational institutions, as also the nature of punishment to be handed out to the MPs involved in the cash-for-questions scam.

“We hold no brief for Mr Ramadoss. But he is being unduly vilified for his stance on OBC reservation and not toeing the line adopted by the upper castes,” Mr Shrivastava contended. Mr Shrivastava warned that “their duplicity will not be tolerated by the weaker sections of this country.”

“We wish to make it clear that if some people think that the battle, which was lost in Tamil Nadu long ago, can be won in New Delhi, they are sadly mistaken. The JD(U) is firmly for reservation for the OBCs without disturbing the general category seats,” he said.