RSS, BJP should desist from issuing threats over quota:Mayawati

BSP president Mayawati today warned RSS and BJP against issuing "threats" of scrapping reservation and alleged that such remarks exposed the double face of the saffron outfits and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Any government, specially BJP and RSS cannot snatch the right to reservation. If Modi government brings a law for ending reservation, the people belonging to these sections will teach them a lesson and they will forget all about doing politics," she told newspersons here.

Mayawati was reacting to RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya advocating review of reservation policy while speaking at Jaipur Literary Festival yesterday. "The people in the BJP and RSS should desist from issuing 'bandar ghudki' (threats) of ending reservation to sections who have been given this right under the Constitution," Maywati said.

"While exposing the double standards and casteist mentality towards these sections, I want to say that that the right to reservation is their constitutional right which has been given to them by Ambedkar," she said. "This also shows the double face of BJP, its ideologue and Modi towards Babasaheb Ambedkar who was the messiah of dalits, advasis and other backward classes," she said.

RSS' publicity chief Manmohan Vaidya had yesterday kicked up a row with remarks favouring a review of reservation policy, saying even the architect of the Constitution B R Ambedkar had not favoured its continuance in perpetuity. But later, Dattatreya Hosabale, Joint General Secretary of the RSS, said that reservation as provided by the Constitution should continue and there should be no unnecessary controversy.