Reacting to the claims made by the Congress, SAD Badal and the BJP to be benevolent towards the Dalits, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema said that these ruling parties in Punjab had robbed the Dalit community of their rights under the reservation policy for giving jobs and promotions to Dalit employees. Cheema alleged that the governments of the Congress party, Akali Dal Badal and BJP had taken and implemented anti-dalit decisions. Revealing the violations of reservation policy during a press conference convened at the party headquarters here on Thursday, Harpal Singh Cheema said that neither the Dalit employees were recruited in the departments under Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, nor the benefit of promotions was given to the Dalit employees. He said that no Dalit employee was recruited in the Punjab Tax and Excise Department for the backlog of 35 ETO posts from 2010 to 2022.“Similarly in the Punjab Police Department, not a single Dalit PPS officer has been included in the list of IPS officers promoted from 24 PPS officers,” said Cheema. He further said that while robbing the Dalit youth of their right to higher employment, the Captain government had issued a silent notification to limit the innumerable chances of appearing in the PCS judicial examination to only four. Similarly, to deprive more than 2 lakh Dalit students of education, Captain Amarinder Singh squandered the scholarship money,” he asserted.
Cheema alleged that if the rights of Dalits were being looted in the departments directly under Captain Amarinder Singh, what would happen to the rest of the departments of the Punjab government. “If the roster of all the departments of the Punjab government is checked, thousands of posts related to the Dalit community will be seen lying vacant,” he added.The LoP further said that as per the reservation policy in Punjab, a letter was issued by the Personnel Department of Punjab on October 10, 2014, during the SAD-BJP government to stop the promotion of Dalit employees. Cheema said that the letter was declared unconstitutional by the SC Commission and a letter was written to the Punjab government to withdraw the same; but this anti-Dalit letter had been implemented by the SAD-BJP government and also by the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government now. “In Punjab and Centre, the SAD-BJP and the Congress parties had ruled. These parties call themselves as benevolent of the Dalits and claims to make a Dalit Chief Minister or Deputy Chief Minister in Punjab. But the truth is that all these parties have a policy of malice and deception towards the Dalits and use the Dalits only as a vote bank,” said Cheema.Cheema said that by implementing the reservation policy in Punjab, the Captain government had not given jobs and promotions to the Dalits in all government departments including Excise, Taxation and Police. “At the same time, if the anti-reservation letter issued by the personnel department is not canceled, the Aam Aadmi Party will launch a major struggle against the Congress government,” he added. Cheema said that the Aam Aadmi Party would go from village to village to enforce the constitutional rights of the Dalits and would also gherao the residence of Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh.