Congress to leverage atrocities against dalits for polls

The main Opposition Congress is making atrocities against dalits an issue against the Modi government ahead of the Assembly elections in five states against the backdrop of its campaign against intolerance, land bill, price rise and growing unemployment.

The BJP’s inability to take a convincing stand on minorities and dalits is the main hurdle in its becoming pan India. The saffron party was isolated on Dadri lynching, land bill and has not succeeded yet in passing the GST bills despite winning the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir.

While Vyapam, rice scam, Lalitgate have already puts its governments in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in the dock, the Patel communities agitation for reservation is weakening its support base in Gujarat. On Tuesday, the former Union minister Kumari Selji launched the offensive on the dalit student’s suicide case in Hyderabad demanding that HRD minister Smriti Irani should be removed along with Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya, against whom a FIR has been lodged. Ms Selja, also the AICC spokesperson, told reporters here that both Ms Irani and Mr Dattatreya should resign or else Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take action against the two by sacking them.

She said that the HRD minister has “misguided” the whole country as she had written a number of letters on the issue and that Mr Dattatreya was “against dalit students in order to promote ABVP”.

“There is much more than what meets the eye. The Prime Minister must speak out on the matter and take action against the ministers,” she said. “The Prime Minister should break his silence. This is not the first time that BJP ministers have worked against the interest of the dalits. There are several others who have spoken ill of the dalits. And hence, the entire BJP, the PM are in the docks.” The issue took a political turn with allegations that the extreme action was a result of discrimination against dalit students at the behest of Mr Dattatreya, who had written a letter to Ms Irani, seeking action against their “anti-national acts”.

The deceased student, Rohith Vemula, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the university in August 2015.