Irrespective of whether political reservation for the OBCs (Other Backward Class) in local civic bodies remained or got cancelled, the BJP would give 27% ticket to them, senior party leader and former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led not only the country but also the world, is also an OBC, he pointed out.
“The OBCs are the DNA of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Ours is a party of the OBCs. Ours is a party that has grown because of the OBCs. The OBCs are the voters of the BJP,” Mr. Fadnavis said at a programme organised by the OBC cell of the Maharashtra BJP.
“The country has a strong leadership in the form of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ideally, the Prime Minister has no caste, but when somebody questions about the caste, it has to be spoken aloud that the BJP’s Prime Minister, who leads not only the country but also the world, is an OBC. Today, the country’s Cabinet has the highest number of OBC Ministers in the history,” he stated.
Supreme Court order
The OBC cell meeting was organised in the background of a recent Supreme Court order, which asked Maharashtra State Election Commission to declare local body poll programme in two weeks. It would mean the continuation of its earlier orders of scrapping the political reservation for the OBCs in local bodies. The BJP has been claiming that the State government did not fulfil the triple test mandated by the apex court to ensure the continuation of the OBC reservation, and the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government has been blaming Mr. Fadnavis’ previous tenure for messing up the issue and non-cooperation by the BJP-led Central government to resolve the crisis.
Alleging it was the Congress workers who had approached the court against OBC reservation, Mr. Fadnavis claimed that his alertness as Chief Minister led to the issuance of ordinance to protect OBC reservation.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole said the DNA of the BJP was anti-OBC and anti-reservation. “The hurdles created regarding the political reservation of the OBCs were started by Fadnavis. During the Nagpur Zilla Parishad elections in 2017, he claimed to clear the OBC roster and so he postponed the polls by issuing an ordinance. The case went to court, followed by the Bhandara Zilla Parishad and other zilla parishads as well. In 2018, the High Court directed that a commission should be set up, but the Fadnavis government did not take a decision on it. The MVA government went to the Supreme Court for the issue, but the Modi government also refused to provide the required OBC data in order to corner the State government,” he observed.
It was the BJP and the RSS that opposed the 27% OBC reservation given by the Mandal Commission, he added.
