Confident of winning majority seats in Telangana, says BJP MP Laxman

BJP is not against Muslims and has been only responding to the “statements” and “assurances” being made by the Congress leaders in support of the minorities irrespective of their economic status, he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is confident of winning majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha elections and the number will be much more than the combined strength of the Congress, BRS and the Majlis Party in Telangana as people are sure to teach a lesson to Chief Minister Revanth Reddy for his “unkept” promises, said Rajya Sabha MP and national OBC Morcha president K. Laxman on Sunday.

In an informal interaction with the media at the party State office, the senior BJP leader accused the Chief Minister of trying to spread “disinformation” about the Narendra Modi government by claiming that it intended to change the Constitution and remove reservations for the marginalised sections, but “people did not believe him”. “The Modi government enhanced quota and did not touch existing ones in the last two terms,” he said.

The BJP has never opposed Backward Classes (BC) census and in fact, the Central government had given permission to the States to conduct their own socio-economic surveys to arrive at definitive data because of the varied caste composition across the country, he maintained.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s promise to hold such a survey on BCs will only open a Pandora’s box, he said and pointed out that a similar survey conducted in Karnataka by the government there has not been made public because of internal differences in the party. “Former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao also conducted a household survey but has not disclosed the report. The Justice Rohini Commission report on categorisation of BCs has been submitted and it will have to be discussed in Parliament first,” he averred.

The saffron party is not against Muslims and has been only responding to the “statements” and “assurances” being made by the Congress leaders in support of the minorities irrespective of their economic status. “We are not against poor Muslims getting reservation benefits under the BC category, depending on their respective caste socio-economic status but only against separate religion based quotas,” explained Mr. Laxman.

The 10% EWS — economically weaker sections — quota introduced by the Narendra Modi government also provides opportunity to the poor, irrespective of religion, to get benefit. The BJP has nothing to do with the promise of its ally in Andhra Pradesh, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) promising to keep up the 4% quota for Muslims there. “It is part of their manifesto, not ours. We will join the government if we are elected to power, but we will continue to oppose the decision,” he affirmed.

Mr. Laxman, elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, dismissed prospects of any electoral reverses in the largest State and claimed that the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and Mr. Rahul Gandhi combine are no match to the BJP. “Every section of the poor, including Muslims, had benefitted from the welfare schemes including construction of houses for the poor by the Yogi Adityanath government [in Uttar Pradesh],” he said.