Outrage over 'footwear stand reservation' tender in temple

Bengaluru: There is outrage over the state government's tender announcement regarding the various sections of the temples that come under the religious endowment department.

The announcement of the auction issued by the Basavanagudi Sri Dodda Ganapati and several other temples has now gone viral everywhere and has caused public and social media outrage. In the auction announcement, tenders have been invited for various works related to the sale of worship materials, sale of tender coconut water, tender for the right to keep footwear and collection of parking toll.

A major reason for public outrage was that tenders for general categories were invited for all other categories and tenders for the footwear stand stall were awarded to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Since time immemorial Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been doing such grassroots work, the Constitution has been framed to uplift these communities economically and socially under reservation. But the government has implemented reservation only for these communities for the job of taking charge of footwear stands, which has led to a debate on the government itself working to nurture untouchability.

Taking note of this, the Minister of State Mujarai Department has called for tenders based on the circular of 2016. It is learnt that on Wednesday, the administration officials of the temple have been verbally instructed that social justice should be upheld by calling a fresh tender to cancel it immediately.

BJP has taken a historic decision by increasing the reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. For the last 50 years there has been a demand for increasing reservation. He said that the Congress party did nothing when it was in power. I have taken this bold step by taking all the party members into confidence. Now they are afraid. He said that since this bold step has been taken for scheduled castes and tribes, they are talking like this because they are afraid that their votes will go to the BJP.

No one should speak ill of this action taken against the SC/ST community. The race has suffered for the last 50-60 years. They have not got power and justice. In such a case this process has started. No one should raise any objection to that. He said that those who raise opposition are anti-SC/ST.