The Bharatiya Janata Party wants the Centre to appoint a national commission on reservations to deal with the demands made by upper castes like Brahmins, Rajputs and Jats.
"In our 1985 resolution we had said that while we are all for the continuation of reservations as provided by the Constitution, we feel that there is a need to amend the Constitution and provide reservation for other classes as well," party chief Venkaiah Naidu said.
He also announced constitution of a national level committee to coordinate the election campaign of five states -- Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram -- to be held later this year.
Pramod Mahajan is the convenor of the committee. R D Aggarwal, Sanjay Joshi, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Shiv Raj Singh Chowhan, Dr Anita Arya, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Babulal Marandi, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Jual Oram, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Balbir Punj and Prakash Jawdekar are the other members.
Naidu appointed former chief minister of Jharkhand Babu Lal Marandi as vice-president of the party in place of Kailashpati Misra, who has been made the governor of Gujarat.
Shivraj Singh Chowhan has been made general secretary in place of Rajnath Singh, who has been inducted into the Union Cabinet as agriculture minister. Bharat Singh from Manipur has been made secretary of the party, along with Harinderji from Bihar.
"We would fight the state assembly elections and the next general election on development and performance," he said.
On the controversy surrounding the voters' list, he said, "Congress seems to have learnt from the CPM how to rig the elections scientifically. We will reach out to the people and find out whether a particular voter exists or not and if he has shifted his place where he has shifted to. Those who have died in the intervening period will be struck off from the voters list. I know this is the job of the Election Commission but we are not going to leave to them and cry afterwards."
Asked if his party was in favour of sending in troops to Iraq, he said the BJP believed in fighting terrorism at home rather than 'sending troops to Cuba, Iraq and other places'.
