Caste and regional imbalance plaguing M.P.
, says Uma Bharti
Comments seen as
bid for greater say
in State BJP affairs
Special Correspondent
Raipur
Former Madhya Pradesh
Chief Minister and senior
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
leader Uma Bharti has criti-
cised her party’s government
in the State yet again by
claiming that regional and
caste imbalances were likely
to lead to conflict.
“I have been telling [Chief
Minister] Shivrajji from the
very beginning that the caste
balance in governance and
administration is disturbed.
Be it Gwalior, Sagar or Rewa
division, the balance is
skewed everywhere,” she said
at a press conference at her
residence on Friday.
“When his Ministry was ex-
panded for the second time, I
was at a CBI court in Lucknow
but I saw the list. I told him
the ministerial names that fi-
gured on the list suggested
that Rewa and Gwalior divi-
sions were being neglected
and the caste and regional ba-
lance was disturbed. This is
not right, I said. I cannot re-
veal what he told me as the
conversation was private but
I had hinted that there was
asymmetry in participation in
power, administration, ser-
vices and educational institu-
tion,” she said.
“This inequality will flare
up in various forms and may
lead to anarchy,” she said. Ms.
Bharti also batted for reserva-
tion for Other Backward
Classes, Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes in the
private sector, adding that
even the poorer among the
upper castes should be given
reservation in the private
sector.
The State government or
Uma Bharti
the BJP has not responded on
the demand but a call for
such affirmative action comes
at a time when former MLA
Pritam Lodhi — a distant rela-
tive of Ms. Bharti and a key
political aide whom the BJP
had suspended last month ov-
er his “anti Brahmin and anti-
women” remarks — has been
trying to bring together
OBCs, SCs and STs on the
same platform in the Gwalior-
Chambal region.
Congress State president
Kamal Nath said Ms. Bharti’s
claim reflected the reality in
the State. He also invited Ms.
Bharti to join the Congress’s
‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.
While Ms. Bharti is known
to take on her own party’s go-
vernment on various issues
often, sources in the BJP said
it was more a pressure tactic
to have a greater say in organ-
isational and Cabinet posts in
the coming days than a cru-
sade for social justice.
“How can she say that the
Gwalior region is neglected
when it has the most number
of Ministers in the Cabinet.
Because the government was
formed with Jyotiraditya Scin-
dia loyalist MLAs who crossed
over, they had to be given mi-
nisterial berths. All of them
hail from the Gwalior region,”
pointed out a BJP source.
The source also contested
the claims on caste imbalance
in the Cabinet, pointing out
that several senior and po-
werful Ministers, such as Bhu-
pendra Singh and Mohan Ya-
dav, hailed from the OBC
community.
However, in the current go-
vernment, Home Minister Na-
rottam Mishra, a Brahmin,
has emerged as the face of the
Cabinet while the party’s
State unit is also led by V.D.
Sharma, another Brahmin,
points out a Congress source.
While OBCs constitute well
over half of the State’s electo-
rate, the various sub-groups
exhibit different patterns of
voting. Ms. Bharti, as well as
Mr. Chouhan, are both from
the OBCs, with the former re-
presenting the strong Lodhi
community.