Congress leader stirs commotion, asks to overhaul Mandal politics

New Delhi: Ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, Congress's former Union Minister Jitin Prasad's comment on the party's Mandal politics is all set to unleash commotion; he has asked the party to fend off its age old Mandal politics wherein a handful of OBCs get advantages. He has also asked the party to overhaul the same, most backward castes and poor upper castes in job reservations get hold of privileges, according to reports.

He further added that Congress should look into the reservation policy for the backward caste people and formulate a more for "imaginative and politically daring inclusion and exclusion of groups from the benefits of reservation", as quoted in a Times of India report.
The above statement is bound to unleash tremor in the political milieu considering the fact that Bihar assembly elections are awaited. His indirect reference to the more assertive OBCs like the Yadav and the Kurmi community might dent the alliance between RJD, JD(U) and Congress as both these parties have OBC supremos helming the affairs.

He has sought deliberation on the issue during the Rahul-Gandhi's Chintan Shivir in Mathura on September 21.

"This is the only relevant political plank for the party's revival in a political market cramped with ossified ideas revolving around caste and religion. If Congress is to break fresh political ground for itself in UP, it can only do so by carving up a social bloc based on progressive branding of the social justice system," he said in a letter, as quoted in a TOI report.

"The poor among the general castes have to be brought into the ambit of reservation. It is an idea whose time has come given the abysmal state of being for a vast section among them. They suffer the same fate as the weaker backwards — victims of the flawed social justice system," the letter further added.