Cong dividing upper castes, OBCs: BSP

Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati today accused the Congress of putting the OBCs and upper castes on a collision course through its move to reserve seats for the backward castes in top educational institutions like IITs and IIMs.

Wary of alienating the backward classes, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) leader, however, said her party was not opposed to the move per se but was against politicisation of reservations, that had led to friction between the upper castes and the OBCs. The government should have taken the upper castes into confidence, she said.

To avoid any conflict between the two groups, she suggested that the number of general seats in elite institutions should be increased so that reservation for OBCs did not affect the chances of general candidates. The BSP leader said she would write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this regard.

The BSP leader, who has been organising meetings and rallies to woo the upper castes and bring them with the SCs/STs on the BSP platform, said she was ready to support any move for reservation to economically backward upper castes.

Questioning the Congress' motives behind the latest move, Mayawati said the party had been in power for 42 years but never bothered about the OBCs. "Why is the Congress suddenly talking about the welfare of the OBCs now?" she asked.

She said the Congress had lost its votebank among SCs/STs and Brahmins and is, therefore, trying to woo the OBCs.

Just like the SCs/STs, the OBCs would not get any benefit from the latest move, she said. Apparently wary of alienating the OBCs in UP, the BSP leader said OBCs were also Shudras (SCs) who had been left out in the first census of castes in 1931.

In fact, the credit for extending reservation to OBCs in educational institutions should neither go to the Congress nor to any other party because it was BR Ambedkar who was instrumental in inserting Article 340 in the Constitution that enabled the governments to work for socially and educationally backward people, Mayawati said.