New Delhi: With Congress leader Rahul Gandhi stressing on caste census and talking about ‘jiski jitni bhaagedari, uski itni hissedari’, the grand old party is in plans to make major reshuffling by giving more opportunity to OBC leaders in the organisational role, sources said.
The Congress in the last few months had made several appointments giving a glimpse of what Rahul Gandhi, who is also the Leader of Opposotion in the Lok Sabha has been advocating and voicing his concern for over last two years.
The Congress sources said that the idea of giving more representation to Other Backward Classes (OBC) is of Rahul Gandhi.
The source said that the idea is to reflect Rahul Gandhi’ vision of proportional representation within the organization, as party’s srijan sangathan (rejig in organisation) is already on.
The source said that incthe last few years, the party has given several posts to leaders coming from SC, ST and Tribal communities in the organisation and now thus is the time to give representation to OBCs.
The source said that many in the party feel that it has consolidated votebank among Dalits, minorities, SC, STs and Tribals. “But the party is yet to bring the OBC vote bank with it, which has remained mostly with the BJP and most of the regional parties. Thus giving representation to the OBCs in among the key factor in the new reshuffling that will take place in the coming days” the source explained.
The source further said that this exercise will be in massive scale and will be clearly visible.
The source also indicated that last week, during the party’s spokesperson and media panelists workshop, many of the leaders from OBC community were also part of the 140 spokespersons, who interacted with Rahul Gandhi.
On the issue of caste census, Rahul Gandhi during the meeting, clarified that no matter how much criticism there is, Congress will not back down from its stand.
“Rahul Gandhi said that not only this, the announcement made by BJP is the result of our pressure – we will get the credit for it,” the source added.
Rahul Gandhi and the Congress has been raising the issue of giving proper representation to the SCs, STs and OBCs for last two years.
Even when the government announced that it will cndicy the caste census, Rahul Gandhi and the grand old party has demanded the government to hold the exercise with full transparency. The party has also said that it will work to increase the ceiling of reservation from 50 per cent.
