RLD pushes for Brahmin welfare board in Uttar Pradesh
'The Brahmin community has historically made a vital contribution to the cultural, educational, religious, and administrative growth of the State. Yet, in the current times, the community too is grappling with a range of socio-economic challenges. Certain nefarious elements are targeting the community like the case we saw in Etawah. There is a pressing need for targeted support to economically weaker sections within the Brahmin community, especially in the fields of education, healthcare, employment, and social empowerment. Therefore, I believe that the establishment of a Brahmin Welfare Board in Uttar Pradesh is the need of the hour,' told Mr. Mishra, to The Hindu.
The RLD leader said he wrote a letter to U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath this week, pressing the demand highlighting that several States such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and more recently Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have already established dedicated boards or commissions for the welfare of Brahmins, which are actively implementing schemes to enhance the community's socio-economic condition.
'If the board is constituted, special schemes could be introduced for economically weaker Brahmin families, including scholarships, self-employment assistance, coaching support, and housing, apart from security and honorarium schemes for temple priests and Vedic scholars,' added Mr. Mishra. The demand holds significance in the light of various social organisations pressing their community issues amid widening caste centric divide.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Wire
2 hours ago
- The Wire
Bihar SIR: Amid Bizarre Voter Roll Irregularities, Conflicting Readings and Weather Complicate Scrutiny
Arrah, Bihar: Early one morning in the third week of August, a team of individuals had gathered around a wooden table at a street corner in Gausganj of Arrah town. They were huddled under a plastic canopy erected to provide shelter from the rain. Spread out on the table were sheets of paper pinned together: the printed voter list for booth number 103 of Arrah constituency, on the northern outskirts of town. They were cadres of the Communist Party of India (ML) Liberation, a registered political party in Bihar, which is part of the opposition Mahagathbandhan. Quyamuddin Ansari, a member of Liberation's Bihar state committee, was leading the team's effort to detect voter fraud, identify missing names or deletions and conduct door-to-door verification of the draft list. However, owing to monsoons, entire neighbourhoods are flooded, making physical visits challenging. Quyamuddin and his team – Vishwakarma Paswan and Himmat Yadav – have been pouring over the draft voter list trying to identify cases of fraud. In one instance, they discovered 24 voters registered at a single address – house no. 10 in the voter roll – and flagged this as a case of fraud. They reached this conclusion because there were Thakurs, Brahmins and Baniya names in the list, which they thought was odd given Bihar's caste realities: how could members of different communities live in the same home? Another giveaway of the alleged malpractice was a father-daughter pair of voters, with the father's age listed as 28 and the daughter's as 29! 'Fraud cannot be confirmed by house visits, it can only be unearthed by an intensive study of the electoral rolls,' says Quyammudin. He has recorded on his phone hundreds of testimonies of people who allege their names have been wrongfully deleted. The Wire could not independently verify the first instance of suspicious address for a couple of reasons: firstly, the locality where this particular house is located is flooded, making it difficult to visit. Secondly, the voter roll lists the house number without giving a corresponding address, making it difficult to find if one is unfamiliar with the area. Although the Liberation team are convinced these two cases are instances of electoral fraud, the matter is not so clear cut, and this highlights the difficulties of verifying electoral lists within such short time spans in inclement weather. The Election Commission uses notional house numbers for a variety of reasons, including when voters have left the address column blank. It started when the poll body started computerising rolls, as The Indian Express has pointed out, and it was during the shift to digitalisation that notional addresses became standard practice. The issue came into prominence when Rahul Gandhi said in a press conference on August 7 that of the over one lakh votes 'stolen' in Mahadevpura assembly segment in Karnataka, half of them involved address irregularities. Jagdeep Chhokar, founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in a phone interview with The Wire, said, 'There are multiple interpretations about address irregularities in voter rolls and the only way to verify is by visiting the house.' 'If you rely on political parties, they will show you what they want you to see,' he added. Regarding the father-daughter age mismatch, Jagdeep Chhokar said that these could be stray errors. 'One should look for systemic fraud rather than individual errors.' ADR is one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court that has challenged the special intensive review in Bihar. But that is easier said than done for multiple reasons. On August 9, the Election Commission replaced the draft voter list online with scanned images, making them harder to machine read and thus unearth large scale patterns of irregularities, Scroll reported. Secondly, although the poll body has given the list of deletions from the SIR voter list (65 lakh so far) it hasn't given a breakup of the reasons for deletion. There is no way of knowing how many names were struck off because they shifted, died or were duplicate entries. Without this information, it makes it that much more difficult for ground verification. Although the Supreme Court on August 14 directed the Election Commission to publish the list of deletions, along with reasons, teams on the ground are racing to unearth irregularities, given the short timespan and a pick up in the monsoon. The final voter list is set to be published on September 1. The case of Mintu Paswan was discovered by a Liberation team of fact checkers working in Gausganj. Mintu was declared 'dead' in the voter roll even though he is alive. In fact, Mintu travelled to New Delhi to appear as a witness in the Supreme Court to demonstrate how the SIR is deleting genuine voters from the rolls. In another part of Arrah, Sudheer Kumar is hunched over papers and notebooks in his office. Kumar is a member of Liberation and serves as the town secretary of Arrah. On his desk are a sheaf of A4 sheets containing voter deletions in Arrah town, along with reasons that the party has compiled with the help of whistleblowers in the administration. Liberation immediately formed multiple teams that fanned out across Arrah town with voter lists conducting physical verifications. It is difficult work. Arrah assembly constituency consists of 45 wards and 242 booths. Additionally, there are 12 gram panchayats. Till now, the party has only been able to detect 16 cases: six who were listed as 'shifted' in the rolls but are in Arrah, and 10 who were declared 'dead' but are alive. Of the 10, party workers have met with seven people, with three yet to be confirmed. Kumar and his deputy Randheer Rana painstakingly go through the 'dead' list and compare it booth wise to the list of deletions provided by the EC. If the names match then party workers are dispatched to the booth to verify the status of the voter, which they do in a variety of ways including talking to neighbours, obtaining and visiting the address and using the EC's voter helpline app. Complicating the process is the fact that parallel to SIR, the election commission has split polling stations. Ideally, there should not be more than 1,200 voters per booth, and when the number exceeds this, a new booth is created or the excess voters are shifted to another booth. In the process booth numbers change, adding to the confusion. For instance, on August 11, four people who were listed as 'dead' were found to be alive, of which three names were found in a nearby booth. Additionally, the block-level officers who did the bulk of the work of collecting documents and adding voters before the draft list was put out are not of much help. Most of them are burnt out, have resigned their posts or are simply not taking calls. 'It is difficult work. How many irregularities can we find over the next 15 days?' Kumar asks. He concedes that most people in Bihar have not yet made the link between SIR and citizenship, and that the opposition has not been able to explain it clearly. Liberation's core voter base in Bihar is among Dalits and EBCs, and according to the party, these are the very sections who will face the maximum voter deletions. Kumar says the BJP wants to finish Liberation in Bihar by eliminating their voters, just like they are 'finishing' Maoists in Chhattisgarh. 'Earlier, there used to be direct booth capturing, now it is indirect booth capturing,' he says.
Hans India
3 hours ago
- Hans India
SIR process routine, Oppn spreading confusion: Bihar Minister Nitish Mishra
Bihar Minister and BJP leader Nitish Mishra on Monday dismissed the controversy around the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) process, accusing some political parties of deliberately spreading misinformation and confusion among the public. Addressing a press conference in Patna, Mishra said, 'The SIR process is a routine administrative procedure. The Election Commission of India (ECI), a constitutional authority, has been conducting elections in the country since Independence. Its impartiality is recognised not just in India, but globally.' He further clarified that names removed from the electoral roll are publicly displayed, and anyone whose name has been mistakenly excluded has the full right to file an objection and get it corrected. 'The draft publication of the voter list was made available, and citizens were given an opportunity to file objections. Interestingly, no political party raised any objections by the deadline of August 14,' he added. Mishra emphasised that under the Election Commission's rules, political parties and individuals must use proper channels to register complaints instead of inciting panic or misinformation. He also showcased the voter list from his own constituency to demonstrate transparency in the process. 'Names that have been removed — including those who are no longer alive — are being published in panchayat buildings and block offices,' he stated. Taking a jibe at Tejashwi Yadav, Mishra remarked, 'He's now crying foul over missing names, but in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, despite being on the voter list, he didn't even cast his vote. He should remember that.' On the 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' led by Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, Mishra questioned its purpose: 'What problem will this yatra solve? They should ask themselves that.' Responding to the opposition's claim that the Constitution is under threat, Mishra hit back, saying: 'This is the same Rahul Gandhi who tore up an ordinance passed by his own party's government in 2013. Those who lack accurate knowledge now claim the Constitution is in danger. They're simply trying to mislead people.' When asked whether BJP voters' names had also been removed, Mishra confirmed that some deletions had occurred in his own constituency as well, and said, 'Yes, names have been removed — including some of those who have passed away or against whom complaints were received.'
The Hindu
5 hours ago
- The Hindu
BJP president Nadda hails Modi, slams Nehru over Indus Waters Treaty
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J. P. Nadda on Monday (August 18, 2025) said that by putting the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tried to correct a 'Himalayan blunder' committed by India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a series of posts on X, Mr. Nadda went into details on the inception of the IWT and that former Prime Minister Nehru had not taken Parliament into confidence while concluding the agreement. 'The most appalling aspect was that he did it without consulting the Indian Parliament. The treaty was signed in September 1960. However, it was placed before Parliament only two months later, in November, and that too, for a token discussion of mere two hours,' Mr. Nadda said. 'History must call it what it was: Nehru's Himalayan Blunder. A Prime Minister who disregarded Parliament, gambled away India's lifelines, and tied India's hands for generations. Even today, India would have continued to pay the price for one man's misplaced idealism, if not for Prime Minister Modi's bold leadership and his commitment to nation first,' he added. By putting the IWT in abeyance, Mr. Modi has corrected 'yet another grave historical wrong committed by Congress', Mr. Nadda said. The IWT was suspended by India following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which claimed 26 lives. Mr. Nadda's remarks came after Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir recently told members of the Pakistani diaspora in the U.S. that any reduction in water flow would be met with destruction of Indian infrastructure. He also issued a nuclear warning, stating, 'We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we'll take half the world down with us.'
