In a bid to follow the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s stand that affluent sections should give up benefit of reservation, former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, a Mahadalit leader, announced that he and his family would not take benefit of reservation during the next Lok Sabha and Bihar assembly polls on Monday.
Manjhi the president of Hindustani Awam Morcha, an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has become the first leader in the state and probably the country to to make such an announcement.
“This is to ensure that those who deserve it (reservation) the most; the weaker sections among us, get it,” Manjhi said. Manjhi said he and his family members will contest from general constituencies in the next parliamentary and Bihar assembly polls. His son and his son-in-law contested from reserved assembly seats in the last assembly polls.
Interestingly, last week, HAM leaders had criticised the RSS statement, disapproving of reservation demands by ‘affluent" sections and favouring a study to find if the backward classes were getting quota benefits. "Reservation is not a poverty eradication programme. Providing representation to deprived sections of society is the feeling of reservation," HAM national spokesman and former Rajya Sabha member Brahmanand Paswan had said in a statement.
“Before making a comment, the RSS should look at thereselves as why no Dalit, Tribal, Backward or a woman have been given important positions in their organisation," he had said.
"They (RSS) need to bring a change in their thinking too alongside the change in the dress code," he had added.
RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi had said at Nagaur in Rajasthan last week, "It is felt that this thinking (demand by affluent class) is not in the right direction. People of such (affluent) class should give up their right and should help the weaker section of the society. But instead of that, they are demanding reservation for themselves which is not a thinking in the right direction.”
