BJP wants 400+ seats to change Constitution, abolish reservation: Congress

The Congress on Monday said that the BJP wants more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha so that they can amend the Constitution and fulfil the decades-old ambition of the RSS to abolish reservation.

It said this is the first time that a political party's goal is not only to win an election but also to secure more than 400 seats.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Monday shared media reports on RSS-BJP leaders' remarks in the last few years on "ending reservation" and alleged that they have been trying to do away with the quota in education and jobs for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBC).

"RSS-BJP have been opposing reservation for 100 years. For the last 10 years they have been continuously attacking reservation--in 2015, RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat had talked about reviewing reservation and its need and time limit.

"In 2017, RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya said reservation should be removed. In 2018, (former) BJP MP C.P. Thakur had opposed Dalit reservation," Ramesh said in a post in Hindi on X.

In 2021, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur of the BJP had said the time had come to put an end to caste-based reservation, he said.

"You must be seeing that many BJP leaders are saying they want 'more than 400' seats so that they can amend Babasaheb Ambedkar's Constitution. These people have openly said so: Ananth Kumar Hegde, the BJP MP from Karnataka and a former Union minister; Arun Govil, the BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Meerut; Lallu Singh, the BJP MP from Faizabad; Jyoti Mirdha, the BJP's Lok Sabha poll candidate from Nagaur," the Congress leader said on the microblogging platform.

Ramesh said the people should note that this is the first time that the goal of a political party is not just to win an election but to emerge victorious in more than 400 seats.

"The BJP is a clear threat to our Constitution. It wants to amend the Constitution so that the decades-long conspiracy of the RSS to abolish reservation can succeed," he alleged.

The Lok Sabha polls are being held in the country and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has set a target of winning more than 400 seats.

In another post, Ramesh said, "Today in Patan, Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi brought out a copy of the Constitution of India and promised to uphold and protect it at all costs in full public view. The Indian National Congress is the true party of nationalism, constitutionalism, and justice - and we will never compromise on these principles."

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the country has seen through the "sinister plot" of trying to amend the Constitution and doing away with reservation because that has been the core philosophy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Even in the BJP, it is no coincidence that leaders such as Jyoti Mirdha and Anant Hegde are talking about amending the Constitution, Shrinate said.

"What does it mean? It simply means denying people the right to reservation. It simply means acting against Dalits, tribals, backward classes and the poor in the general category. People have understood your sinister plot and will throw you out," she said.