Tejashwi Yadav, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Deputy Chief Minister, hit back at Union Home Minister Amit Shah for his remarks on “appeasement politics” and said that if he was castiest, he would not have married a girl out of his caste.
He was responding to Mr. Shah who had earlier accused the Nitish Kumar government of playing appeasement politics through the recently released caste survey report. Mr. Yadav is an alliance partner in the Nitish-led Bihar government.
“If I were casteist, I wouldn’t have married a girl outside my caste, a Christian girl. It is their [BJP’s] job to speak lies, we only work for you people”, Mr. Yadav had said while addressing an event on November 26.
He also dismissed allegations that the population of certain castes were inflated in the survey report.
“They [BJP] speak only lies. If we wanted to increase some caste population in the survey, the Chief Minister who comes from the Kurmi caste, would have increased its population”, he said. “I’ve heard his [Mr. Shah’s] statement. If it is [caste survey] is wrong, then who has stopped you from conducting a caste census across the country, Why aren’t you doing that?”, he asked.
Earlier while addressing a rally at Patahi in Muzaffarpur on November 5, Mr. Shah had alleged that the population of Yadavs and Muslims were deliberately inflated in the caste survey report as part of Bihar government’s “appeasement politics”. “The [caste] survey inflated the numbers of Yadavs and Muslims and it was done under pressure from Lalu Prasad”, he had said.
The ruling mahagathbandhan government (grand alliance) had released the caste survey report on October 2 and it was passed unanimously by State legislature in the recently concluded Winter Session. Subsequently, it became a law after being approved by the Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar.
Later, based on the caste survey report, the State government hiked reservation quota for Backward, Extremely Backward Classes, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes from the existing 50% to 65%. Political analysts believed that for Nitish Kumar-led grand alliance government in Bihar, the caste survey report and reservation hike would be major poll planks in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and State Assembly election in 2025.
