SOLAPUR: The responsibility of dispensing
social justice
to
oppressed
and backward sections is “atonement for the sins our ancestors may have committed”,
PM Modi
said Monday in a retort to the opposition’s allegation that BJP aims to do away with
reservation
over the long term.
“Check my record over the last five years. I have the numbers (in Parliament) on my side.
But I never wanted to walk that path (revoking reservation),” the PM said in western Maharashtra’s reserved constituency of Solapur, where BJP’s Ram Satpute is taking on Praniti Shinde, daughter of Congress veteran and former Union minister Sushilkumar Shinde.
“Forget me, even Babasaheb Ambedkar (had he been alive) wouldn’t be able to scrap reservation in India. I am committed to upholding that policy for all oppressed classes, SCs, STs and OBCs.”
Modi, who had famously spoken about the new generation having to right the wrongs of previous generations while referring to social justice during a December 2015 speech in Parliament, said the only thing he would always oppose was reservation on religious lines, as envisioned by Congress.
At Satara, his next campaign stops in the region, the PM said he could give in writing that Congress’s attempt to expand nationwide the “Karnataka model” of granting reservation to all Muslims through the OBC quota would fail. “Till Modi is alive, he won’t allow such a reservation policy.”
Citing schemes undertaken by the NDA govt for the uplift of Dalits and other backward communities, he said over 25 crore such people had come out of poverty in the past decade.
“Neeyat sahi hai to natije bhi sahi milte hai (an honest motive will yield a positive result),” the PM added.
