Bangalore: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Supremo Mayawati on Sunday accused the Congress of subserving the interests of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes, forcing them to turn to insurgency.
Addressing a South Zone convention of the BSP here she said ‘despite ruling the nation for maximum number of years after independence, the Congress has failed to alleviate poverty and unemployment among the SCs, STs and the OBCs, resulting in many of them becoming naxalites or taking to the wrong path’.
Even the tribals who had been residing for years together on forest lands, were being dislocated and their lands being encroached upon and sold to big business houses for a song he said accusing the Congress of playing into big corporate houses.
The former UP Chief Minister said the Congress had not been able to bring about any change in the ‘societal status or financial status of the SCs, STs and the OBCs’.
She alleged that new rules were being framed every other day by the Congress party to ‘destroy the reservation’ given to the above classes under the Constitution.
While on one hand there is no increase in the reservation quota, inclusion of other castes under this quota has diluted the this provision given to the backward classes, Mayawati said.
She said BSP as a party is also concerned about the poor among the upper castes and religious minorities and had written to the centre seeking reservation for them (in education and employment), for which it received no response. (UNI)