A video showing Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole talking about a statement purportedly made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and asking what is wrong with the statement, is being widely shared on social media.
The video: The video, which shows Patole talking about Gandhi, “What did he say there? That when everyone in our country is on equal footing, we will think about reservations. What is wrong about this?”
The claim: The clip is being shared by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionaries, such as IT Cell Head Amit Malviya, who said that Rahul Gandhi said he, or the Congress party, said they “will remove reservations.”
He added that this statement was endorsed by Patole.
How did we find out the truth?: Using the term ‘Rahul Gandhi remove reservations’, we ran a keyword search on Google.
This led us to a September 2024 report by Livemint, which said that Gandhi had attempted to clarify the ‘ending reservations’ remark amid backlash from the BJP.
The report mentioned that the controversy started over a statement he made during a session at Georgetown University in Washington DC in the USA.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for the interview on YouTube, and found an hour long version of it on Rahul Gandhi’s verified YouTube channel.
We went through this discussion, which touched upon caste issues, the Uniform Civil Code, and the INDIA bloc, among other issues.
Towards the end of the video, Gandhi took questions from the students and faculty in attendance.
The viral claim: At the 53:28 mark, one of the students asked him about reservations and the caste system, asking for his and the Congress party’s thoughts on reservations being a permanent solution to issues that “necessitate” the system.
She asked the leader, “ At what point would we as a society, but more importantly, you and your party, look at caste-based reservations as a treatment of symptoms and not the actual problem?”
In response, he asked her why she thinks the system is a treatment of symptoms, and she told him that they were initially introduced because of lack of equal access to opportunity, which “is where the lag is.”
Gandhi told her that despite Dalits, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) making up 73 percent, they only represent a small fraction of the people in positions of power.
He elaborated that as per “financial numbers, tribals get 10 paise out of 100 rupees; Dalits get 5 rupees out of 100 rupees, and OBCs get a similar number,” factually showing that “they’re not getting participation.”
Gandhi adds that the issue is that “90 percent of India is not able to play,” and that if one were to list “every single business leader” in India, only one out of the top 200 would be one person from the OBC community. “They’re 50 percent of India, but we’re not treating the symptom.”
“Now, it [reservation] is not the only tool. There are other tools,” he said, but added that they “will think of scrapping reservations when India is a fair place. And India is not a fair place.”
One can also view the full interview on Georgetown University’s YouTube channel.
Conclusion: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi did not say that he, or the Congress party, would “remove reservations.”
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