BJP hopes to turn new OBC panel debate as Modi's Mandal moment

Govt keen to introduce Bill on new commission in ongoing Budget session

The Narendra Modi government is keen to ensure the passage of a Bill to grant constitutional status to its putative National Commission for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes in the current session of Parliament.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) views this as an effort to consolidate OBC support base, which majorly helped in the party's emphatic victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

Such a move will also help the government to politically outmanoeuvre the Opposition, which since the last two days has disrupted proceedings in the Rajya Sabha to protest the vacancies in the commissions for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Backward Classes (BCs) and minorities.

Congress, Samajwadi Party and Janata Dal (United) have pointed at the vacancies as evidence of the government's lack of intent in protecting the interests of OBCs. Opposition leaders have also alleged that the new commission was the BJP's way to delete the names of certain castes, particularly the Yadavs, from the OBC list.

Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday accused the Opposition of spreading disinformation. He said any deletion or inclusion of castes by the new commission can only be done with the concurrence of Parliament.

Naidu also said that it wasn't unusual for time gap in filling up vacancies in statutory bodies for various reasons and that it doesn't affect the workings of such bodies. He gave detailed instances of previous occasions, including during the years of United Front government of 1996-1998 and Congress-led UPA from 2004 to 2014, when vacancies in these bodies weren't filled for several months.

The Modi government believes the Opposition is rattled with the government's latest move to constitute a new backward class commission. It is expected that the commission would also study the question of granting backward caste status to such caste groups as Patels in Gujarat and Jats in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The government wants to neutralise the Opposition criticism and "disinformation" on the issue by pushing for the Bill to be passed in the ongoing session.

The Bill envisages a backward class commission with judicial powers. The new body will replace the existing National Commission for Backward Classes, which is considered toothless. On March 23, the Union Cabinet had decided to accord constitutional status to such a commission.

"The PM has emerged as a messiah of the poor and an icon of the OBCs. These parties have all these years done politics in the name of OBCs but did little for the empowerment of these groups," Naidu said.

In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday said that never has it happened in the country that all these commissions — the SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities — are headless and without members too. "This shows how much the BJP government cares for these classes," Azad said.