NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) now has more clarity on reservation based on caste, gender and class than before, and will fight for additional quota for the lower castes, women and the economically backward, senior leader Yogendra Yadav said.AAP had come under attack from political pundits for focusing on populism and for being silent on issues related to castes and reservation. Yadav — a key architect of AAP’s spectacular poll debut in Delhi polls alongside Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and others — said AAP, which until recently didn’t have “much clarity” on issues such as reservation, is very much in favour of a quota for SC/STs and OBCs. “We came from different backgrounds. We (AAP) didn’t have clarity about it until recently.However, we are now clear about it. We will work for more reservation for disadvantaged groups. Discrimination on the basis of caste is extreme in India. Equally worse is discrimination based on gender and class. We will work towards the welfare of all groups that are victim to such discrimination,” he told ET. He didn’t elaborate or disclose details of AAP’s likely new proposals on quota.Notably, AAP has done exceedingly well in reserved seats in the Delhi elections and has been a rage among disadvantaged sections, several of them belonging to lower castes.It secured 29 per cent of the Dalit vote, and won nine of the 12 reserved seats to the 70-member assembly. While AAP grabbed a lion’s share of Congress’ traditional Dalit vote base, the BJP managed to win 28.8 per cent of the Dalit vote. AAP also named two Dalits in the seven-member cabinet led by Kejriwal. Girish Soni, 49, is one of the Dalit faces in the cabinet, and the other being giant-killer Rakhi Birla, 26, who defeated four-time MLA and minister Raj Kumar Chauhan in Mangolpuri.An AAP functionary told ET that his party it can no longer afford not to address “compulsions raised by social issues” and merely focus on corruption.Asked if such a stand would alienate some of its supporters, especially the meritocracy-obsessed techies who are now joining AAP in hordes, he noted, “It (reservation) is a constitutional requirement, and I don’t see why it should alienate people who want to join us. All of them understand that a lot needs to be done to uplift the underprivileged.… Though our movement began with a single-minded purpose of battering corruption, we now have to wake up to social realities.”He didn’t wish to be identified. Meanwhile, Meera Sanyal, who quit her job as chairperson of the Royal Bank of Scotland (India) to join AAP, declined to comment on reservation, suggesting that the question be raised to the spokesperson of the party, Atishi Marlena, who didn’t respond to a query from ET forwarded to her by Sanyal. Captain GR Gopinath, who recently joined AAP, also didn’t respond to questions from ET