A government college in the district of Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh has distributed bags to almost 250 Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe students which say "SC/ ST scheme."
"What's wrong if it is spelled out clearly, because the bags were distributed under a welfare scheme... If some people don't like it, I will get the words erased... In any case, it was the supplier who wrote it on the bags,'' B.R. Nalvaya, the college principal, told The Indian Express.
While Nalvaya said that he would ensure that "SC/ST scheme" would be erased from the remaining bags, the Congress Party has lashed out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the newspaper reported.
Arun Yadav, president of the Congress Committee in Madhya Pradesh, tweeted that the bags exposed the "anti-Dalit and anti-tribal" mindset of the RSS-backed BJP government. Describing the bags as "atrocious" Meenakshi Natarajan, the former Congress Party lawmaker from Mandsaur, said that she intended to lead a protest on Thursday. "It amounts to profiling," she told the newspaper.
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