Bharat Ratna for ‘Jan Nayak’ Karpoori Thakur: BJP bid to blunt JD(U)-RJD social justice pitch

Socialist icon and Bihar’s former Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur has been awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously, the Rashtrapati Bhavan announced Tuesday.

The BJP-led Centre’s decision to confer the country’s highest civilian honour on Karpoori comes at a time when Bihar is celebrating the centenary of his birth anniversary from January 22-24 and the opposition INDIA alliance has been pitching for a nation-wide caste census.

Popularly known as Jan Nayak i.e., people’s leader, Karpoori served as the Bihar CM from December 1970 to June 1971 and from December 1977 to April 1979. He passed away on February 17, 1988. Belonging to the Extremely Backward Class or nai (barber) community, he was not just one of the most respected social justice leaders in north India, but one who saw early on the cleavage within the backward caste — backward and most backward.

As the CM in 1978, Karpoori implemented a layered reservation regime, which was unparalleled at that time. It provided a 26 per cent reservation model in which EBCs got 12 per cent quota, OBCs got 8 per cent, women got 3 per cent, and economically backward classes (EBWs) from among upper castes got 3 per cent.

I am delighted that the Government of India has decided to confer the Bharat Ratna on the beacon of social justice, the great Jan Nayak Karpoori Thakur Ji and that too at a time when we are marking his birth centenary. This prestigious recognition is a testament to his enduring… pic.twitter.com/9fSJrZJPSP

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) <a href=«https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1749806381497270300?ref_src=» https: class="" rel=«nofollow, noopener» target="_blank">January 23, 2024

Expressing delight at the government of India’s decision, Prime Minister Narendra Modi