The ruling Congress here

would hold a massive demonstration on February 16 to condemn the "continued steps the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA has been initiating to deprive the poor and downtrodden of their Constitutional rights."

PWD Minister and PCC president A Namassivayam said in a press release on Friday that the Centre has been "zealously going ahead to deprive the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes" of the fruit of reservation in education and employment.

The recent trend to ensure that the benefit of reservation was not "available" to the depressed sections is highly "condemnable."

The architect of Constitution Dr B R Ambedkar had framed the necessary blueprint for reservation to promote the wellbeing of the downtrodden and to procure social justice to them, he said and added that the first Indian Prime Minister and also the Congress regimes at the Centre nurtured the policy of reservation in the past.

But, the present BJP-led NDA had been trampling upon the reservation policy ever since it came to power at the Centre.

Namassivayam said the ruling Congress would hold a demonstration at the head post office here on February 16 to condemn the Centre's "anti-poor" policies.

The Centre is also trying to use the recent verdict of Supreme Court that "reservation is not a fundamental right" to dilute the reservation principles as envisaged by the stalwarts of the downtrodden people.

Namassivayam wanted the Centre to go in for a review petition to challenge the Ssupreme Court verdict.

He said the AICC secretary Sanjay Dutt (in charge of the Congress party affairs here), the Chief Minister V Narayansamy, Ministers, legislators of the Congress and its functionaries would participate in the agitation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)