BJP president Amit Shah clarified on Monday that his party was not against reservation for Dalits and Other Backward Class in education and employment.
“We are in support of the reservation and we do not want any change in the present form of reservation.”
Shah’s comments come after the RSS (BJP’s ideological mentor) chief, Mohan Bhagwat, reportedly talked about ending the reservation based on caste. BJP’s political opponents have been using Bhagwat’s statements to ‘warn’ the Bihari voters about the ‘impact on their livelihood’ if the BJP came to power.
Shah said that Bhagwat’s comments were made in the context of Rajasthan and not Bihar.
Shah said the NDA was set to win 32-34 of the 49 assembly constituencies where polling was held in the first phase on October 12 and 22-24 of the 32 constituencies which went to the polls on October 16.
He added that the BJP will pick a chief minister for Bihar after the NDA alliance led by it wins the ongoing assembly elections.
“The party and the parliamentary board will decide the name of the chief minister soon after we win a two-thirds majority,” Shah told the media.
Shah said the people of Bihar did not want a return of the ‘jungle raj’, he said, in an attack on the Grand Alliance of the JD-U, the RJD and the Congress.
“People do not want jungle raj-2. We will come to power in Bihar,” he asserted.
Shah said a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was a must for Bihar’s development.
“Only (we) can develop Bihar because (RJD chief) Lalu Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi and Nitish Kumar ruled the state for 25 years but it remained backward.”
Shah accused the Grand Alliance of trying to divert the development issue in the election campaign by raking up issues of beef consumption and reservation in education and jobs. “We are committed to the development of Bihar.”
