Allahabad:- Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today accused the Congress of “insulting” Dr B R Ambedkar in the past and using his name for political gains, even as he urged students protesting Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula’s death to call off their agitation and wait for the probe to conclude.
“The Congress has always insulted Ambedkar, whose name it is now trying to use for political gains. There was not even a portrait of the Dalit icon in the central hall of the Parliament until 1989, the period during which the Congress was in power for most part. It was only after the VP Singh-led government, in which I was a minister, came to power that the father of the Constitution got his due,” the Union Food Minister told reporters here.
“However, I would urge all the students, including those in JNU who have launched an indefinite hunger strike over the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, to call off their stir. The LJP has been a champion of Dalits and our party had pressed the demand for an inquiry by the CBI or any other independent agency into the circumstances that drove the Hyderabad University scholar to take the extreme step. A judicial inquiry has been ordered. The inquiry commission is supposed to complete its probe within three months. We should have patience till then,” Paswan said.
“To those questioning the Narendra Modi government’s sensitivity towards Dalits in the backdrop of Rohith’s case, I would like to point out that the Hyderabad University has witnessed a number of such tragic incidents involving bright young Dalits but it is only this time that a proper inquiry has been ordered,” he said.
The Union Minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution was addressing a press conference after winding up his three-day tour of the district, during which he travelled to remote parts and took stock of the implementation of centrally-sponsored schemes besides holding a series of meetings with his own partymen as well as the local leaders of the BJP in view of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh scheduled early next year.
To a query, the Lok Janshakti Party Chief said “Mayawati has never been a leader of all Dalits. Her attention has remained confined to her own caste. This has alienated all the other Scheduled Castes who have been looking at LJP with great hope. The BJP and the LJP will fight UP elections together and both Mayawati’s BSP and the ruling Samajwadi Party will be decimated in the assembly polls.”
On the possibility of a grand alliance taking shape in UP like the one in neighbouring Bihar, Paswan’s home state, where the LJP-BJP combine had to suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of JD(U)-RJD-Congress coalition, he said, “every state is different. No experiment can be replicated elsewhere.”
To a question, he said “It is wrong to suggest that the BJP-led NDA government is against reservations for the weaker sections. The Prime Minister has repeatedly asserted that quotas are going to remain intact.
PTI
