New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has appeared to appease both as he is in a cleft stick over the amended Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The upper caste and SC and ST have two opposite stands on the amendment.

Upper caste groups have protested against the amendment to overturn a March 2018 Supreme Court judgment that made an inquiry mandatory before booking any person under the law. The SC had called “arbitrary” the law that provided for automatic registration of a case once a complaint was lodged.

Posters put up at many places said upper caste will vote against the BJP if the amendment was not withdrawn. “We will continue our protest till the government withdraws the amendment,” said Kedar Singh Tomar, president of Samanya Pichchda Alpsankhyak Adhikari Avam Karamchari Sangh (SAPAKS), the body representing upper castes.

The protests have unnerved the BJP, which is keen to retain its voter traditional base ahead of the assembly elections. This prompted Chouhan’s announcement last week that no one will be arrested without proper investigation under the amended law. There was no clarification from the government on how the announcement that contradicts the law will be implemented.

The announcement has brought more trouble. SC and ST groups have threatened to disrupt Chouhan’s Ashirward Yatra being undertaken to galvanise support ahead of the elections. They have questioned how his verbal diktat can overrule the law and can be implemented without any explicit order. “We will hold protests at the CM’s yatra and ask him how a verbal order can derail a law,” said Heeralal Trivedi, who heads an organisation of backward classes and minorities, at a protest rally in Bhopal.