Bhubaneswar: The Odisha unit of BJP announced that it will launch a two-month-long programme from Thursday to create awareness among OBCs about their constitutional rights and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s purported remark that led to his disqualification from Lok Sabha.
The nationwide ‘Gaon Gaon Chalo, Ghar Ghar Chalo’ programme of the BJP will continue till April 14, the birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar, in other parts of the country, but the state unit of the party will extend it for two months in Odisha.
During the two-month-long programme, Odisha BJP leaders and workers will visit villages and make OBCs aware of their constitutional rights, and how they are being deprived of it in the state, the party’s OBC cell president Surath Biswal told reporters on Wednesday.
“The ruling party in the state has cheated the OBCs. It claims to have provided adequate representation to OBC candidates in the party but does not provide reservation in jobs and education. People will be made aware of these facts,” he said.
Biswal criticised the state government for withdrawing the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (Amendment) Bill, 2023 on the last day of the recently concluded budget session of the assembly.
Claiming that 54 per cent of Odisha’s population is OBC, the BJP leader said the state government deliberately did not make provision for 27 per cent reservation for them.
“The state government was never interested in OBC upliftment,” he alleged.
State assembly elections will be held in Odisha next year along with Lok Sabha polls.
PTI
