Mayawati wants Dalit on Lokpal Bill committee (Lead)
April 22nd, 2011 - 10:31 pm ICT by IANS
Lucknow, April 22 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati Friday took on both the United Progressive Alliance government and the civil society for not including a Dalit on the Lokpal Bill drafting committee and demanded that someone from the community be added.
At a press conference here, Mayawati demanded the inclusion of a Dalit community member on the committee, but stressed it should not be a politician.
“Both the Congress-led UPA government and the civil society are equally responsible for not bothering to give due representation to a member of the scheduled caste community on the all important Lokpal Bill drafting committee,” she said.
Mayawati did not even spare social activist Anna Hazare. “What is even more shocking that even someone like Anna Hazare, who is spearheading the movement against rising corruption in the country, did not care to ensure inclusion of a Dalit on the committee. After all he hails from Maharastra which gave birth to the greatest Dalit icon Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, who led several movements for the uplift of downtrodden Dalits,” she said.
Noting that the UPA government had nominated senior ministers Pranab Mukherjee, P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, M. Veerappa Moily and Salman Khurshid and the civil society was represented by Anna Hazare, Justice Santosh Hegde, Arvind Kejriwal, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan, she said: “But I would like to ask them if there was not a single Dalit in this country who could be considered worthy of nomination on the august committee”.
She said this was an example of the Congress’s readiness to overlook the larger interest of Dalits and “clearly reflects their anti-Dalit mindset”.
Maywati said she was not interested in having any Dalit politician on the committee. “I would like to urge the government and civil society to nominate a non-political person from the scheduled castes community to be nominated on the drafting committee. I am sure there are many who could meet the requirement.”
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