The other day, the Telugu Desam Party-Jana Sena Party alliance did what it could to shore up the support of the Other Backward Classes. Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan are keen to promulgate a law on the lines of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act for backward classes.
As per political commentators, this is prone to be "misused" and could set up a bad precedent. The Atrocities Act is going to feature stringent provisions. For example, anyone accused of an offence under the Act could end up suffering at the hands of a "non-applicability of anticipatory bail" clause.
In a column, Swarajya Magazine reminds its readers that the Supreme Court, back in 2018, spoke of how the SC/ST Act has been "misused as a tool for unjustly targeting both ordinary citizens and public officials". The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, for example, was scared that SCs and STs would get angry and vote in the Congress party. The BJP has been trying its best to ensure that the Act is not diluted. The result is that Indian society is becoming more and more shy of discussing problematic issues without taking electoral considerations into account.
