BCs want Vja MP seat

A meeting of BC intellectuals was held on Sunday under the auspices of the Andhra Pradesh BC Association. The meet, attended by over 30 BC caste leaders from seven constituencies under the Vijayawada parliamentary jurisdiction, demanded that the Vijayawada seat be allotted to BCs. Dr N Maresh, State president of the BC Association, who presided over the meeting, appealed to various political party chiefs to look into the history of the constituency and allocate the seat to BCs.
Dr Maresh said it was unfortunate that as many as 17 parliamentary elections had taken place since 1952, and a BC did not get a single chance to contest. He said that the Vijayawada MP seat had been in the hands of one social group for more than 70 years, which was against the spirit of democracy.
“There are currently seven assembly constituencies in Vijayawada. Two constituencies are reserved while the other five constituencies do not have a single BC MLA. Vijayawada has a population of 16 lakh in the parliamentary jurisdiction, of which more than eight lakh people are BCs including minorities, four lakh are SCs/STs, and two lakh are Kapus. We would like to inform the political party leaders that we have already gathered the support of SCs, STs, BCs, minorities and Kapus and we are going to organize BC meetings on a large scale in the days to come,” he said.
The BC Association president added that the next BC meeting was going to be held in Tiruvuru constituency. He stressed that they would prove that Vijayawada Adda was BCs Adda in the next elections. “For decades, Vijayawada had been the focal point for political consciousness,” he said and urged all the parties to allot the Parliament seat to BCs. He added that the BCs should be given priority in politics instead of treating them as a vote bank.
BC leaders T Arjun Rao and Vemula Baby Rani, swimmers Jagdish, Morla Mahidhar, Bejawada Ganesh,  Jakka Srinivasa Rao, Pantagani Ramesh, Shiva, Vemulakonda Subbarao, Komati Koteswara Rao, Machu Nagendra, Kosuru Naresh and others were present.