BHUBANESWAR: The Congress on Monday said time has come to launch a nation-wide agitation to ensure that the conspiracy of BJP for abolition of the fundamental right of reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government jobs is defeated.
Addressing a media conference here, Odisha in-charge Jitendra Prasad, OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik and national spokesperson of the party Rajib Tyagi said the BJP had permitted Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 to be quashed by the Supreme Court.
But, it was only after the Congress protested that the Act was restored, they said and added that atrocities against the dalits as per National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB) have reached 43,203.
The Congress leaders maintained that even the backlog of SC/ST/OBC jobs continues and the scholarship for students of these communities has consistently declined. They maintained that converting this into a Congress-BJP issue is nothing but a design to digress from the principal issue of right of reservation to SC/STs in government jobs.