Ever since the Banda rape case came into sharp focus, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh have started making a concerted bid to woo the Nishad community — the community to which the Banda rape victim belongs.
These two parties are now busy reminding Nishad voters of how they have always been a Nishad-friendly party and how they have done their bit for the community.
The Congress, which first raised the Banda rape case on public forum, is now using the issue to press for inclusion of the Nishad community into the scheduled caste category. The inclusion of 16 castes and sub-castes including Nishad, Kevat, Mallah, Bind, Dheemar, Kashyap, Majhwar, Godia, Gond, Tureha, Kharvar and Beldar has been pending since the past several years.
“The rape case would have gone unreported if the Congress had not raised it. The girl would have probably been still languishing in jail. The Mayawati government, which claims to be dalit-friendly, released the girl only when the court stepped in,” says Vivek Singh, Congress MA from Banda.
At its Kanpur convention in 2008, the UPCC had passed a unanimous resolution demanding Scheduled Caste status to these select 16 communities.
“The ministry of social justice had written a letter requesting the UP government to send forward the ethnographic profile of all those communities, which needed to be included in the list of scheduled castes. It has been three years but the state government has yet not responded to the letter,” says UPCC president Rita Bahuguna Joshi. The Congress, on Saturday, held a convention of Nishad, Kevat, Mallah, Kashyap, Bind, and Kahar to discuss their problems and leading the caste brigade was UPCC vice-president Ummed Nishad, husband of slain dacoit-turned-politician Phoolan Devi. The BSP, on the other hand, accuses the Congress of playing a double game on the issue and deliberately delaying the inclusion of these castes in the SC category. Even as the Congress and the BSP battle it out for Nishad votes, the pitch has been further queered by the SP that lays claim to Nishad votes