Branding' by MP cops like knifing nation's heart: Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: The Congress continued to target the Modi government on the dalit issue with party president Rahul Gandhi on Monday accusing the BJP government of “knifing” the nation’s heart with its “casteist attitude” after photos showed aspirants for the post of police constables having caste categories written on their bare chests in Madhya Pradesh.

Meanwhile, in a bid to emphasise its seriousness over dalit issues, the government would knock on the doors of the judiciary to ensure reservation in promotions for scheduled castes and tribes in government jobs.

Taking to Twitter, Mr Gandhi put out a picture of two youth with the words “SC” and “ST” written on their chests respectively.

“BJP government’s casteist attitude has knifed the heart of the country. By writing SC/ST on the chest of youth in Madhya Pradesh, they have attacked the country’s Constitution. This is BJP/RSS thought. This same thought sometimes ties a vessel around the neck of dalits, or a broom on their bodies, and stops them from entering a temple. We will defeat this thought,” Mr Gandhi tweeted in Hindi.

Photographs in various newspapers showed aspirants with “SC” (Scheduled Caste), “ST” (Scheduled Tribe) and “G” (General) marked with sketch pens on their chests as they queued up for their medical examination yesterday, triggering a massive debate on social media.

In a bid to control the damage, Union minister and BJP ally Ram Vilas Paswan said the Modi government wants three issues — reservation for SCs and STs in promotions in government jobs, quota for them in universities, besides the law on atrocities against them — to be settled as per the demands of the dalit groups, which have argued that a string of court orders on these matters have hit their interests adversely.