HC ban on caste-based rallies in UP
In a significant move, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Thursday banned caste-based rallies in Uttar Pradesh.
The decision deals a major blow to the BSP and the SP, which had been holding caste-based rallies to expand their vote base in the state.
“We stay caste-based rallies throughout the state of UP,” the Lucknow bench of the court comprising justices Uma Nath Singh and Mahendra Dayal said on a PIL filed by a local lawyer, Motilal Yadav.
The BSP has organised a series of 38 brahmin bhaichara sammelans across the state in the past four months and Ms Mayawati addressed a brahmin maha sammelan in Lucknow on Sunday.
In fact, the PIL on which the court issued the ban orders on Thursday was filed after Ms Mayawati’s rally in the state capital.
The SP, on the other hand, had also organised a brahmin sammelan in Lucknow and has now started organising OBC rallies.
The Congress has planned a series of Muslim conferences to woo Muslims in UP for the general elections.
Politics in UP has been driven by caste after the 1989 Mandal movement and political parties have now started shifting focus to sub-casteism in the state.
The court, on Thursday, said that caste-based rallies divide the society and therefore no such rallies should be organised in UP by parties.
The court, while banning the caste-based rallies, also issued notices to the BJP, Congress, BSP and SP, asking them why these rallies should not be banned.
The Central government, state government and the Election Commission have also been made respondents in the PIL.
The petitioner submitted that there was a spurt of caste-based political rallies in the state and political parties were organising caste-based rallies in the name of different castes like brahmin, kshatriya and vaishya etc.
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