Ahmedabad: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year, opposition Congress party has invented something which appears to shape up a dalit – tribal agitation eventually, against the BJP ruled state government.

A few years ago, reservation issue was invented to position politically strong Patels against the BJP government. Some attempts were also made early this year to trigger anti-Padmawat movie agitation of Kshatriya against the BJP governments. Now in the case of dalits and tribal, Congress has come out with a new issue which is about budget allocation for dalits and tribal linked to their total population in the State.

A meeting of dalit MLAs was called today at Circuit house in Ahmedabad. It was attended by Congress backed independent MLA Jignesh Mevani, Congress MLAs Naushad Solanki, Anand Chaudhary, Dr. Anil Joshiara, foreign church funded NGO Navsarjan’s founder Martin Macwan and some left leaning ‘activists’ among others.

In ditto Patidar quota agitation style, BJP MLAs representing related caste group(in this case dalit and tribal) will be visited at their residences by agitators and asked to support population linked budget allocation demand. The first such visit will take place on August 7 at BJP MLA Pradip Parmar’s residence in Asarwa area of Ahmedabad.

In a note issued today evening, Congress MLA Naushad Solanki said he had moved private bill seeking population linked budget allocation for tribal and dalits in the last assembly session. Solanki claims that the government is openly looting the money allocated to dalit and tribal communities due to which development and welfare works of dalits and tribals are not becoming possible.

‘For 7.01% schedule caste population in Gujarat, the State government had allotted 2.64% budget in 2015, 2.62% in 2016 and 2.67% in 2017 which was insufficient when compared to population in light of central planning commission and Niti Aayog recommendations,’ Congress MLA claims adding that per head allocation for each citizen of Gujarat was Rs 25,621.87 while for Schedule caste it was Rs 14,080.23.

Solanki in his statement said that even ruling party MLAs from dalit segments were called to the meeting but they didn’t arrive(for obvious reasons).

DeshGujarat