Rahul assures Gujarat Dalit leader to include his demands in poll manifesto

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday met Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani while he was campaigning for Gujarat Assembly elections.
NEW DELHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday met Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani while he was campaigning for Gujarat Assembly elections.
Post meeting, Mevani said that the Congress vice president assured him of including their demands in the election manifesto.
“Met Rahul Ji. He told us 90% of our demands aren’t demands but our constitutional rights which will be included in manifesto,” Mevani said.
The meeting is believed to be aimed at strengthening Congress’s prospects in Gujarat Assembly polls.
Following the meeting, the young Dalit leader, who shot to fame after the Una Dalit flogging incident last year joined Rahul’s Navsarjan Yatra from Navsari.
Earlier on Thursday, Mevani said, “I want to make it clear that neither have I joined the Congress nor am I going to join the party in the future. Not just the Congress, I have no plans of joining any other party as of now.”
The purpose of Mevani, a lawyer fighting land rights cases of Dalits, to meet the Congress vice president was to know his stand on 17 demands related to his community.
The demands include an allotment of five acres of farmland to the Dalits, alternative employment for those involved in cattle-skinning and manual scavenging and the release of a probe report into an incident of firing on the community members at Thangadh in Surendranagar district in 2012.