Alarmed after seeing its ally — the BJP — making efforts to woo the Scheduled Caste (SC) community of the State, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Tuesday maintained that the interests of the SCs are “safe” under SAD leadership.
Party’s SC wing senior vice-president and Punjab Tourism Minister Sohan Singh Thandal attribute all the “speculations regarding BJP maneuvering to polarize the SC community vote bank to its favour” to the media hype which is “baseless and without any substance”.
Thandal claimed that the high-end advisory has already been issued to the bureaucracy to act promptly for the implementation of constitutional provisions made for the welfare of the Scheduled Castes. “Bureaucracy has also been instructed to exercise utmost care while passing orders on the subjects pertaining to SCs and to refrain from issuing orders on such subjects on its own without prior approval of the government,” said Thandal.
Thandal said that the letter issued by the Personnel Department on October 10 regarding denial of roaster point in seniority has created anguish among the employees belonging to SC category which could have been avoided.
He disclosed that this matter has been discussed at party forum at length and all the SC elected representatives of the SAD under the chairmanship of Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker would meet the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for the cancellation of the said letter. “Chief Minister would also be urged to implement the 85th constitutional amendment in the state,” he said.
“SAD has always been acting as the custodian of legal and constitutional rights of the people belonging to Scheduled Castes. SAD-BJP Government ruling combine, during its seven years regime, has rolled out many schemes for the welfare of the SC community including Shagun scheme, pre-matric and post-matric scholarship scheme, Atta-Dal Scheme, among others,” he said.
Castigating the Congress party for playing communal card for polarization votes, Thandal said that it is only the SAD which has been working relentlessly to bring downtrodden communities to the mainstream whereas most of other political parties have considered them mere vote bank.