LUCKNOW: Five days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the repealing of the contentious farm laws, apparently in a bid to cool off the farmers’ ire against the BJP, another sensitive issue has cropped up in the way of the saffron party in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The Jats in western UP have urged the prime minister to fulfill the BJP’s earlier “promise” of reservation for the community in UP,
Uttarakhand and Punjab.
According to highly-placed sources, a meeting of two zones of the Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti was held in Meerut on Tuesday. The Jat body has said it will support the party which ensures quota for the community The sources said the community is about to start a public campaign from December 1 demanding reservation across the three states.
Jats are mainly concentrated in western UP districts with around 12 per cent of the local population.
The Samiti claims that in around 125 Assembly seats in western Uttar Pradesh, 15 in Uttarakhand and over 100 in Punjab, the Jats play a key role in the electoral fate of political parties.
The sources close to the Samiti further claimed the Centre had promised Jat reservation just before the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. Even before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 similar promises were made to the community but to no avail, they said adding that the Jats were feeling “betrayed”.
“Jats have not been given their due. Their support had made the BJP form governments at the Centre and Uttar Pradesh,” said a senior member of the Jat body.
He added that the Samiti had been demanding the inclusion of Jats in the OBC list for a long time at the central level. He claimed that talks were held with representatives of the central government from time to time, but the decision had been elusive.
Rae Bareli Congress MLA joins BJP
Months ahead of the UP elections, the BJP got a shot in the arm as two opposition MLAs, including the Congress legislator from Rae Bareli, joined the party on Wednesday. State BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh welcomed Congress MLA Aditi Singh and BSP Sagri (SC) MLA Vandana Singh into the party at its state headquarters in Lucknow in the presence of senior leaders. Aditi Singh shifting to the BJP assumes significance as the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency is held by Congress president Sonia Gandhi