How Can Someone Earning Rs 8 Lakh Be Called Poor? Tejashwi Lambasts 10% Quota Law

New Delhi: Calling the move to introduce a 10 percent quota for the economically poor among the upper caste as hasty, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav wished to know from the Modi government how can a person earning Rs 8 lakh a year be considered poor. Those earning less than Rs 8 lakh a year are eligible to avail the quota benefits.

"You tell me how can someone earning Rs 8 lakh a year be called poor. It means the person is earning Rs 66,666 a month, can he really be called poor. It's a strange mathematics. It also means that the person is paying a 20 percent tax on the same which amounts to Rs 72,500 a year. The person who can pay Rs 72,500 as tax is being given reservation by this government. Hail the intellectuals, Hail Modi," Tejashwi tweeted.

The leader from Bihar predicted that the hastily passed reservation bill will meet the same fate as the demonetisation exercise of the government. The demonetisation move was criticised all around for being hasty and ill-informed, which caused immense hardships to people after the government banned Rs 500 and Rs1000 currency notes overnight.

"We are against the way the reservation for upper castes has been pushed through. There has been no study, no survey, no commission report. The government just tinkered with the Constitution and had its way. The hastily introduced bill by the casteist Modi government will meet the same fate as demonetisation," Tejashwi said in another tweet.

The RJD leader also complained that the Bahujan samaj has been asking for the reservation to be increased from the current 50 percent, but nothing has been done for the same. He said the upper caste people have had it so easy as they got the reservation without even asking for it.

The RJD leader also pointed out the duplicitous nature of those who were earlier bitter critics of the reservation and used to call it charity but today they have no qualms in accepting the same for themselves.

The new reservation law provides 10 per cent reservation for people who have an annual income of less than Rs 8 lakh, or people who own less than five acres of farm land, or people who have a house less than 1,000 sq feet in a town (or 100 sq yard in a notified municipal area).