PEOPLE BEING KILLED... RAHUL GANDHI DECIDES TO “JOIN HANDS AND PUT DIFFERENCES ASIDE”

By Associated Press

(Reporter- Tamanna Jaiswal, Photographer- Esha Anand)

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The level of debate in the All India Political Party is not the only thing that increased, the level of engagement and participation from each delegate increased immensely as well.

Mr. Nitesh Kumar was the one to begin the committee session with the General Speakers List and had suggested in the first 20 mins of the committee that only rich ST/SC: creamy layer, should not get reservations and therefore they can organize a test, for free of cost, which is skill-based and not knowledge-based. Mr. Shashi Tharoor and Mamta Banerjee address the issue that no jobs are available to SC/ST due to reservation discrimination. Mr. Akhilesh Yadav then joins into the discussion and points out that the reason that jobs are not available is that people part of the SC/ST are not allowed to participate. Mr. Yadav also accuses the people who are not part of the SC/ST of being afraid of competition. He believes that the starting line must be the same for all and reservations should and will continue.

During the moderated caucus of the discussion of women's reservations, Mr. Nitish Kumar questioned the BJP by stating that for the past 6 years they have been saying that they will be taking action. Mr. Akhilesh Yadav stepped up and questioned back to Congress saying why didn’t Congress do anything when they were in power for 50 years?

While discussing the ‘Pros and Cons of reservations’, Mr. Shashi Tharoor pointed out that people who are low in social and economic status do not get access to reservations. Mrs. Mehabooba Mufti suggested that reservation must be given on the basis of merit and not on the basis of caste. There was also a discussion on ‘Religion and Reservation’, Mr. Rahul Gandhi believes that reservations based on religion will “break the nation” and on the contrary, Mr. Jagmohan Reddy is for religion reservation.

The committee moved into the ‘zero-hour’ debate and the topic of discussion suddenly shifted to discussing the economy of the country. Once the committee was directed back to real issue all had gathered to discuss, Mr. Narendra Modi and M.K. Stalin agreed that India has been a caste-based region since the beginning and reservation should not be made based on economic status. Mr. Narendra Modi added that everyone is born with equal rights. The topic of reservations in private companies had come up in which Pema Khandu and Ravi Shankar Prasad stated that it is up to the private company whether or not reservations to be given and on the other hand Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav said that there should be reservations in private schools. In continuation of debate on this topic, Mr. Narendra Modi suggested a solution that the government can influence private companies to include reservations via rallies and social media.

Towards the end of the day, the committee went into crisis. The emergency situation was that after the passing of Article 370 and Article 35A being scrapped, reservations were only being given to SC/ST and people living at the border along with Kashmiri Pandits who are a minority. The Muslims disagree with this as they don’t want Hindus to get an advantage. The situation has extended to Ladakh. Muslim influencers were at house arrest but had escaped and have urged Muslims to create ruckus and chaos. During this, 350 civilians have been killed and 58 tourists are being held hostage whose location is unknown. Muslims now demand reservations not to be given to Kashmiri Pandits.

Mamta Banerjee and Nitish Kumar proposed short term solutions such as sending drones and troops to the valleys to search for tourists, sending policemen to arrest these Muslims, increasing border security so that the situation does not spread and send AID via Airforce. Mamta Banerjee also suggested that negotiations with Muslim leaders might help ease the situation. Narendra Modi was full in support of negotiations keeping in mind that the flag must remain the same. Rahul Gandhi stepped forward and said, “We must join hands and put differences aside” and that he is in “full support of BJP” in this situation.

Today’s committee sessions went a little slow and a working paper was submitted. Tomorrow the delegates, as well as the executive board members, hopes that the committee will come with a profitable outcome with the help of resolution.