Kicking off her campaign for the forthcoming Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, BSP president Mayawati on Monday accused the Congress of making “tall promises on caste census only to get votes of OBCs”. Of the 230 Assembly seats, the party is contesting on 183 seats; its ally Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) is in the fray in 47 seats. A large part of Mayawati's speech, made at a rally at the Mungaoli Assembly constituency in the Ashok Nagar district, was critical of the Congress. She said the Congress did not implement reports of the Kaka Kalelkar commission, the first Backward Class commission set up in January 1953 to investigate conditions of socially and educationally backward classes, and the Mandal Commission, the second Backward Class commission whose recommendation led to the 27% reservation for OBC candidates at all levels of its services in 1990. She appealed to OBC voters “that they should not get misled by such promises of Congress”. In Mungaoli, the BSP had finished third in the 2018 elections and polled 14,202 votes. The Congress defeated the BJP by a narrow margin of 2,136 votes. Without providing reservation to the OBCs, Dalits and tribals in the private sector, the BSP supremo said, “most of government works in the Centre and the states are being handed over to big capitalists and rich people”. Mayawati also said the OBC community should not forget “that they did not get the benefit of reservation as per the Mandal Commission report” under the Congress government but during the tenure of the Janata Dal under VP Singh. “They got the benefit during the VP Singh government after the hard struggle and efforts of the BSP,” she said. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister added that the Congress did not honour Bhimrao Ambedkar with Bharat Ratna, calling it reflective of the party’s “casteist mentality” for “such sections (Dalits)”. Mayawati added that Ambedkar was honoured in the VP Singh government following the efforts of the BSP. Mayawati also asked why the Congress had not declared national mourning for even a single day following the death of BSP founder Kanshi Ram.
