Patna, Oct. 18: The RSS today declared that its chief Mohan Madhukar Bhagawat's statement on quota had been "distorted", and emphasised that the organisation was firmly in favour of reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and EBCs.
The move comes against the backdrop of the Grand Alliance using Bhagwat's statement - about "reviewing" the reservation policy by a non-partisan panel - as weapon in the ongoing Bihar Assembly elections.
"Reservation is a tool for overall development of the backward classes," said the note, which was in Hindi.
Interestingly the RSS press note was issued in the name of a regional functionary, Mohan Singh. It was distributed among journalists at the BJP office after a press conference addressed by national spokesperson Syed Shahnawaz Hussain. The press note had come on email.
Both RJD chief Lalu Prasad and chief minister have pounced on Bhagwat's statement in their election speeches. Reservation provisions for the downtrodden classes would be scrapped if the BJP wins Bihar, the Grand Alliance leaders have been chorusing despite frantic clarifications to the contrary by BJP leaders, ministers, party president Amit Shah and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP's damage control exercise began with Shah first deploying party general secretaries Ram Lal and Ram Madhav - both RSS pracharaks - for a coordinated response. From the government side, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was the first to clarify. And while laying the foundation stone for a memorial for BR Ambedkar in Mumbai last Sunday, Modi emphatically said that the system of reservation would not be scrapped, and criticised the Opposition for its "false propaganda" against the BJP.
Disgruntled BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha, who has been tweeting his discontent with the party, on Sunday endorsed Bhagwat's statement. "Sri Mohan Bhagwat's views on review of reservations should be taken seriously. We hold the views of the RSS supremo in high esteem," Sinha tweeted.
Hussain brushed aside Sinha's statement. "I don't know what Shatrughan Sinha has said on the reservation issue; the party president and prime minister have already made their views clear on the issue," Hussain said, adding that now the RSS had also made its stand clear.
The BJP's political opponents feel that the RSS clarification will not have any impact. "They are simply looking for an excuse for their real intent, which is against the idea of social justice," RJD national spokesperson Manoj Jha told The Telegraph. Jha also said that what Bhagwat had said about reservation was written in 1966 by MS Golwalkar, the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS, in his book Bunch of Thoughts.
The RSS clarification also comes at a time when there are shouts and whispers of an internal BJP survey pointing to a close fight between the NDA and the Grand Alliance and a consolidation of the backward classes' vote for the Grand Alliance.
According to BJP sources, party leaders feel that the Modi wave and the momentum the party generated in the 2014 general elections are not at play in Bihar.
The BJP, the sources said, is also not too encouraged by the performance of allies LJP, RLSP and former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's HAMS in the first two phases of polling in the state.