NEW DELHI: In a move that will touch the ‘backward vs forward’ faultlines in Congress and outside , former Union minister Jitin Prasada has asked the party leadership to junk Mandal politics dominated by a handful of OBCs and espouse a “daring” revision giving primacy to “most backward castes” and “poor upper castes” in job reservations.

Prasada said Congress should spearhead the demand for a “relook at the backward reservation policy” for “imaginative and politically daring inclusion and exclusion of groups from the benefits of reservation”.

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The veiled reference to assertive OBCs like Yadavs and Kurmis, who form part of a group of backward castes seen as having cornered quota benefits at the cost of weaker communities in the Mandal list, is bound to ruffle feathers and spur a debate, particularly as it comes ahead of the Bihar elections where Congress is allied with OBC heavyweights Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar.

Nudging Congress to reinvent its Mandal stance, Prasada has urged the leadership to discuss the issue at the Rahul Gandhi-chaired ‘chintan shivir’ in Mathura on September 21, called to work out a revival plan in Uttar Pradesh where the party has been languishing on the margins for two decades.

Prasada this week shot off his missive to AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, pointsman for the Mathura session.

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“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,” the letter said, adding, “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.”

The advocacy for extension of quotas to “poor upper castes”, though raised by Prasada in the limited context of UP, is a controversial issue that risks attracting the charge that he is peddling the “savarna” line couched in equitable sharing of the Mandal pie.

Its added sensitivity stems from the elections in Bihar where Congress is in alliance with OBC leaders who are seen as Yadav and Kurmi chieftains.

“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 said.

According to Prasada, “poor upper castes” feel alienated because “no party represents their concerns” and articulating their cause will be crucial “for Congress’s revival in UP”.

Buttressing his demand, Prasada said MBCs were invisible from political offices like local bodies and government jobs, “untouched by the Mandal revolution” after 20 years. He said MBCs were “politically emaciated” by dominant OBCs who leveraged their economic status like landholdings to hijack reservations.

READ THIS IN HINDI: मंडल की राजनीति पर कांग्रेस फिर से सोचे — जितिन प्रसाद