NEW DELHI: Junior social justice minister Ramdas Athawale has said his political outfit, the Republican Party of India, will move the Supreme Court against the Bombay HC order “imposing restrictions” on the use of ‘ Dalit ’ in the media and in day-to-day conversations.Athawale said there is strong resentment among the Dalits against the government advisory and that while he supports the use of the constitutional term Scheduled Caste in official communication, the fight for the ‘Dalit’ identity is not merely a semantic battle, and as a former member of the Dalit Panther, he is strongly opposed to the government’s decision.Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan also batted for the use of Dalit as an identity marker for the community, and said Dalit and Scheduled Caste (SC) have become synonymous usage over the years.“Dalits and adivasis is commonly used even though Dalit is not a caste centric term. That may be the reason why specific ‘scheduled caste’ and ‘scheduled tribes’ was included in the Constitution when Babasaheb B R Ambedkar drafted it. Media has used the term as it is easily understood by people,” he said, adding that this was also the official position of the Lok Jantantrik Party, of which he is the chief.Paswan also said the ‘perceptional’ use of Dalit should not become a contested issue, views that were echoed by Republican Party of India chief and former Dalit Panther Ramdas Athawale. The minister also said the constitutional term — SC — may be used for all official communication of the government, it must be left to the media and the community to decide how it wants to define itself.The ministry of information and broadcasting had, on August 7, “advised” that “media refrain from using the nomenclature Dalit while referring to members belonging to SC in compliance with the directions of the Bombay HC and the constitutional term ‘Scheduled Caste’ in English, and its appropriate translation in other national languages should alone be used for all official transaction, matters, dealings, certificates etc....”Paswan also lashed out at ‘upper caste’ protests against the amendment to the Atrocities Act. “Six PMs have come and gone and Narendra Modi is the seventh since the law came into existence 30 years ago. If there was large scale misuse, why was it never opposed? Government did not offer anything new to Dalits,” the minister said.