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Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar has suggested the abolition of political reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) “as the people have started voting for Dalit candidates in elections without any bias.”
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Ambedkar who heads the Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM), said, “Political reservation should be done away with because voting for a Dalit candidate is not a big issue now. But educational and services reservation should stay as Dalits still face social discrimination.”
Mr. Ambedkar’s party has allied with the CPI, the CPI(M) and the Peasants and Worker’s Party (PWP) and has put up candidates in 66 seats across Maharashtra.
Mr. Ambedkar said: “There was an intellectual class along with Dr. Ambedkar and even after him. That class joined the service sector and got stabilised. So what was left was a class which made politics their main agenda, but didn’t have the guts like the older generation to play independent politics. We now have the fourth generation, inclining towards independent politics, which is a good sign.”
The lot of the Dalits was improving. “A thin transformation from community atrocities to individual atrocities has occurred, which is a big change. Over a period of time even these individual atrocities will end.”
Denying the Bahujan Samaj Party as a phase of Dalit movement, he said, “Maharashtra has 13 percent Dalit population which is not a winning vote percentage. A Dalit leader here has to take other groups along with him. In UP, the Dalit politics starts with 24 percent vote share and ends at 32 percent which is a winning equation.”
Mr.Ambedkar is a relative of Milind Teltumbde, the central committee member of the CPI (Maoist). He is also one of the few political leaders who openly support the Maoist movement.
“In 70s the Maoist movement was against Zamindari, now it’s against exploitation of Tribals by the corporates. It is the only movement in the country which treats the natural resources as an asset of the nation,” he contended adding that he did not subscribe to the “indiscriminate violence.”
Speaking about divisions among the Dalits, he said, “The non-converted (Hindu) believe in religious politics and support Shiv Sena–BJP whereas the converted (Buddhist) Dalits align with organizations which don’t have a religious agenda.”
He denied presence of “Modi wave” during the Lok Sabha elections and said that Dalits voting for the BJP during general elections should not be taken as a benchmark.
“The voting was against the Congress because of its misrule. Thus whoever found whichever platform they clinched on it to defeat Congress,” Mr. Ambedkar said