Reserved seats let Hindu voters elect Congress candidates who did not genuinely represent Dalits

Evidence

In the 1937 elections, there were 151 reserved seats25 from which only Untouchables could be elected. The Congress won seventy-eight of these, and in Ambedkar’s words, it “left only 73 seats to be filled by true and independent representatives of the Untouchables” (BAWS 9, 92). For, he argued, the majority of seventy-eight seats won by the Congress “were won with the help of Hindu votes and they do not therefore in any way represent the Scheduled Castes” (BAWS 9, iii). Significantly, the Congress, despite its financial muscle, lost out to non-Congress Untouchable candidates in Bombay and Bengal, where the Dalit movement was strong. Ambedkar formed the Independent Labour Party only five months before the February 1937 election, despite which the ILP “obtained an astonishing degree of success. Out of the 15 seats assigned to the Scheduled Castes in Bombay Presidency it captured 13 and in addition it won 2 general seats”. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1322

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the double-vote logic from the Poona Pact debates: without the separate electorate, Hindu voting majorities could capture reserved seats.