Dalit BJP MPs' anger grows: 'Modi govt hasn't kept even one promise'

New Delhi: It seems all is not well in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as parliamentarians belonging to Dalit community are coming out in the open to blame the government for not keeping the promises made to the community by the party.

Joining the chorus of voices questioning accusing the government for failing to deliver on the promises made to the community, Dalit lawmaker Yashwant Singh, the BJP's Lok Sabha member from Nagina in western Uttar Pradesh, too has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi blaming the Centre for not delivering on even one promise made to the Dalits in the last four years.

Singh is the fifth parliamentarian from the ruling party to make his reservations about the party's performance and the fourth from Uttar Pradesh. In his letter to the PM, Singh said that it was becoming difficult for the party lawmakers to respond to the community who were being harassed.

The Dalit parliamentarian from Nagina has urged PM Modi to take corrective steps and enact laws for quotas in the promotion, introduce reservation in the private sector and fill the thousands of vacancies in posts reserved for scheduled castes.

The lawmaker's letter to the PM is seen as an indicator of the growing perception that the Dalit community, which had started responding to overtures from the BJP in recent years, was fast getting disillusioned.

That message appears to have reached the government, going by how the PM and BJP president Amit Shah have used every opportunity over the past week to reaffirm the party's commitment to Dalits.

At Friday's BJP parliamentary party meeting, all lawmakers were also told to reach out to the community in their respective constituencies and even spend two nights in Dalit-dominated villages closer to Ambedkar Jayanti observed later this month. Amit Shah has already re-started the practice of having lunch at a Dalit family during his two-day visit to Odisha.

Many in the BJP point how most of those speaking out haven't been in the party for very long and were inducted in the years leading to the 2014 elections.

Like Dr Yashwant Singh, who had been a minister in Mayawati government between 2007 and 2012 and joined the BJP before the Lok Sabha election, Chhote Lal Kharwar, the Lok Sabha member from Robertsganj, who complained about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, had joined the BJP just in 2014.

Savitri Bai Phule, who has been one of the more vocal parliamentarians of the five, started her career with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), had joined the BJP ahead of the 2012 assembly polls and won the Bahraich seat in 2014.

Ashok Kumar Dohrey, the lawmaker from Etawah, had dumped the BSP and joined the BJP in 2013, while Udit Raj was a freelance Dalit leader trying to make his mark in Dalit politics after quitting the bureaucracy. Raj got a BJP ticket from Delhi in 2014 and won.