Berliner Tageszeitung - Chirag Paswan Defends Caste-Based Reservations Amid NDA Dispute

Union Food Processing Industries Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan on Saturday responded to Rahul Gandhi’s comments on caste discrimination by asking parties that governed before the BJP to explain why discrimination against Dalits continues.

Gandhi had referred to an alleged purification ritual at Haldwani’s Ramlila ground after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a gathering there on August 8, 2026. He asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order an FIR against those responsible and said the act amounted to untouchability of the kind Dalits continue to face across India.

Paswan also called for the resignation of Bihar Cabinet Minister Santosh Kumar Suman, a leader of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular). The NDA ally had sought a review of reservation policy and sub-categorisation within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Suman and his father, Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, replied that Paswan should resign first. Both said Paswan had misunderstood their position and that their proposal concerned sub-categorisation, not the abolition of reservation or the use of a creamy-layer test.

Paswan strongly defended caste-based reservation, describing it as an unyielding constitutional right rather than a concession. He said social inequality and caste discrimination have not disappeared and reservation therefore remains necessary.

He said the system established in the Constitution by B.R. Ambedkar could not be abolished or weakened simply because a group demanded it. If discrimination persisted despite long periods of rule by other parties, he argued, those governments had failed to strengthen the foundations of equality.

The basis for reservation is social discrimination and untouchability rather than economic status, Paswan said. In his view, changing that basis would require changing the Constitution.

He then said Suman should leave the Bihar Cabinet before making such proposals. Paswan repeated that treating reservation as an economic-policy question was inconsistent with its constitutional purpose.

Suman wrote on X that he was willing to resign if Paswan did so first. Calling Paswan his younger brother, he said he had never advocated a creamy-layer rule or an end to reservation and warned against mixing those questions with sub-categorisation.

Manjhi, speaking in Gaya, also said Paswan should resign first and properly understand Suman’s proposal. Suman argued that people still left behind should receive the benefits of reservation and that policy should reflect the aspirations of a changing generation.

C. Fournier--BTZ