NEW DELHI: Former Member of Parliament and Dalit leader Udit Raj appealed to the Dalit community in Delhi on Sunday to not vote for Arvind Kejriwal and AAP candidates in the upcoming Assembly elections.
Addressing media persons at the Delhi Congress office, Udit Raj said that Kejriwal is anti-Dalit, anti-poor and has caused a lot of harm to the Dalit community.
The Congress leader said that Kejriwal played with the sentiments of Dalits by making the broom his party’s symbol to get their votes but did not work for their welfare.
He said that Kejriwal wants the votes of the Dalits, the backwards and the poor, but he is silent on the caste census.
Udit Raj, who is a former senior colleague of Kejriwal from the income tax department, said the AAP convenor had made many promises to the Dalit community but did not fulfil any in the past 10 years.
He said that Kejriwal did not fill thousands of vacant posts in the Delhi government, which would have benefitted the Dalit community, nor did he regularise the ad hoc/temporary employees, including sanitation workers, teachers, DTC employees and several other categories of employees.
The former MP said that Kejriwal had also promised to appoint a Dalit as the Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab, but did not keep his word.
Others present at the press conference were AICC national spokesperson Abhay Dubey and spokesperson Asma Tasleem.
Udit Raj also posed eight questions to Kejriwal at the press conference, including why Kejriwal, who has promised Pujaris and Granthis Rs 18, 000 per month, has not offered a similar honorarium to Buddhist monks, priests at the Guru Ravi Das Mandir and Valmiki Mandir, who are all from the Dalit community, and priests from poor churches.
The Congress leader also asked why the AAP has no Dalit or backward among its 11 MPs in Rajya Sabha; why Dalit students were not sent abroad by Kejriwal under the Ambedkar Scholarship Scheme announced in 2020 and why Kejriwal forced Dalit minister Rajender Pal Gautam to resign when he mooted implementation of the 22 pledges of Dr Ambedkar.
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