In a bid to recapture Madhya Pradesh, Cong tries to woo SCs, STs with 2-decade-old Bhopal Declaration

More than two decades after it was adopted with much fanfare, the Congress in its bid to recapture power in Madhya Pradesh has dusted out the famous Bhopal Declaration promising to implement affirmative action for Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes in government purchases and contracts.

In its elections manifesto released earlier this week, the party said that if elected, a quarter of the government procurement will be made through entrepreneurs from the SC-ST communities. Moreover, 25 percent of the small contracts up to Rs 1 crore will be reserved for these communities.

This is a reiteration of the idea which was seeded in January 2002 in a conference of Dalit and Tribal intellectuals held in Bhopal. An initiative of the then MP CM Digvijay Singh, the conference had passed a declaration seeking to expand the scope of affirmative action for the weaker section.

A charter of 21 demands was presented, some of which were inspired by the American model of diversity for Asian Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities introduced after the civil disobedience movement in the 1960s. The policy entailed a certain percentage of government procurement and purchases made from businesses run by these communities.

The Digvijay Singh government implemented some of the recommendations of the Bhopal Declaration. The party however was dislodged from power in December 2003. Except for a brief period in 2018, the party has since been in opposition since.

“Perhaps that was one of the reasons the idea did not find resonance in the governance, policies, and programs thereafter,” says Dr. Amar Singh, the Congress MP from Punjab who was Principal Secretary to Digvijay Singh in 2002.

“The re-iteration of the declaration has a clear imprint of the former CM in the party manifesto,” adds Amar Singh, who is currently campaigning in MP.

Out of the total 230 seats in the Madhya Pradesh assembly, 35 are reserved for the SCs and 47 for the STs.

Schedule Tribes constitute 21 percent of the state population, which is the highest in India. SC population in MP is pegged at 16 percent.

In 2008 and 2013 assembly polls, the BJP outperformed the Congress in both SC and ST seats.

But in 2018, Congress managed to win 30 out of 47 ST seats and 17 out of 35 SC constituencies to breast ahead of the BJP in a close finish.

In Karnataka too, the Siddaramaiah government introduced reservations in public tender works of Panchayat Raj, the Public Works Department, and Urban Local Bodies by introducing a statutory provision in 2016. The ceiling of the contract value was doubled to Rs 1 crore by Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government just ahead of the state assembly polls earlier this year.