Congress accuses BJP of 'compromising' interests of OBCs

The Congress today accused the BJP of "compromising" the interests of the OBCs after a bill to grant them Constitutional status could not be passed in Parliament, and demanded that the prime minister and the BJP president apologise to the backward classes.

As many as 35 BJP MPs were absent in the Rajya Sabha when the Constitution Amendment Bill for setting up of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) failed yesterday as the government suffered a major embarrassment.

"Instead of doing a public drama of admonishing its MPs for being absent from Rajya Sabha, the PM and the BJP president must apologise to the backward classes for compromising their interests and bring in fresh legislations to undo the wrong," Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.
 

He said betrayal of the cause of backward classes was in evidence yesterday as 35 members of the BJP were absent from the Rajya Sabha leading to failure of the 123rd Constitutional Amendment Bill that seeks to set up the NCBC.

Under the BJP regime, a systematic decimation of rights of SCs, STs and OBCs has become the mantra, he said.

"As BJP attempts to put a lid on this sordid episode by blaming the Congress Party, let us remind the nation that it is the Congress Party which brought in the 27 per cent reservation of Backward Classes and constituted the National Commission of Backward Classes," he said.

Congress leader P Chidambaram had yesterday accused the government of not being serious about the passage of the Constitutional amendment bill for backward classes and said it was "totally unprepared and nonchalant" and should have engaged with the opposition.

Senior Congress spokesperson Ghulam Nabi Azad said OBC reservation was given by his party in the 1990s.

"The government's new amendments to the National Commission for Backward Classes law was an eyewash and it is clear that the BJP was not serious about the Bill," he said.

Azad said the opposition always gives amendments to any Bill, which are printed a day before and the government knows about them.

"We had not even issued a three line whip. Otherwise we would have had around 30 additional members yesterday. We defeated the government without even a whip," he said.

The leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha asked how the BJP can claim that the Congress is "anti-backward", because if that was the case the party would never have given reservations for OBCs when it was in power.

"While the government's Bill said there will be a three- member commission, we said there should be a five-member commission comprising all backwards and among them a woman and a minority member.

"So our suggestion is much more pro-backwards than the government's original bill. Another amendment we moved was because we wanted to challenge the government's anti-federal provision in the Bill," he said.

Azad said the government wanted to centralise powers, adding, "Our amendment mandated consent or concurrence of the states. So we are democratic and federal and they are dictatorial and anti federal," he claimed.