Former Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh at the executive meeting of the All India Jat Maha Sabha at Shimla.
Shimla, May 12, 2013: Former Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh was on Friday unanimously appointed president of the All India Jat Maha Sabha.
A unanimous resolution to this effect was passed at the executive meeting of the Maha Sabha here today.
Moving the resolution, the secretary general of the Maha Sabha Yudhvir Singh said, it was the proud privilege of the community to elect Capt Amarinder as the president.
He said, Capt Amarinder was one of the few icons of the community who was not only known across the country, but outside India as well.
He expressed confidence that under his leadership the Maha Sabha will be able to successfully get implemented all the pending issues.
Delegates from several states and their respective presidents were present during the passage of the resolution. The states included Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttrakhand.
Expressing his gratitude to the members of the Maha Sabha, Capt Amarinder said, he felt privileged and honoured about being unanimously elected president of the Maha Sabha. He said, he had been associated with the Maha Sabha for last 30 years as its patron since 1980 when Capt Bhagwan Singh was its president.
Asserting that Jat Maha Sabha was an apolitical organisation with the sole agenda of reforming the community and fighting various social evils, he said, it had members subscribing to different political ideologies.
He said, the Jat community should get the reservation under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. He said, due to the shrinking of land holdings quite a number of people belonging to this community, otherwise believed to be affluent, were reduced to penury and poverty.
He clarified that the Jat Maha Sabha was demanding reservation only for those who need it and not those who were known as the creamy layer. Quoting examples from Punjab he said, the educated youth belonging to the community were not finding jobs and with the result they were getting trapped in various social evils like addiction. He said, from his preliminary inquiries from delegates coming from different states he had found that the situation there was no different.
He clarified that the Sabha was a non-political organisation and there were people in it who belonged to different political parties be it the Congress, BJP, the Lok Dal or any other organisation. Moreover, he said, it was not a sectarian organisation as the Jats were spread in different religions including the Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims.
The former Punjab Chief Minister maintained that when the reservation had been implemented by the government of India in Rajasthan why it could not be implemented nationwide. Several states like Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh have already provided reservation to the Jat community.
Giving brief history of the Jat Maha Sabha, Yudhvir Singh said, it had been founded in 1906 and had great leaders associated with it like Sir Chhotu Ram, Sardar Baldev Singh, Dara Singh and others.
Prominent among those present included Raja Ram, Rakes Tikait, Gen SS Ahlawat, Shakti Singh, Harpal Singh, Renu Daljit Singh, Surinder Kaur Sandhu and others.