An 11-member all-party delegation led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, including his arch rival Tejashwi Yadav and a state BJP representative, will meet the prime minister. Narendra Modi To ask the Center to order a caste census to count OBCs on August 23.
It’s a tough call for the Narendra Modi government ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, which are just six months away. The party came to power in the largest state after a gap of 14 years in 2017 on strong backing of OBCs, but it is also committed to its core upper caste electorate in Uttar Pradesh, especially at a time when the 2022 elections Ram temple is expected to be a major election issue.
Realizing this, Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party has risen up the ante by shouting “Hum ginti main aate ko chune ke ke hi nahi hain” (We are not OBCs) on the issue of caste census in Parliament and that his party is spreading anger in Uttar Pradesh Come in any count)”. By doing this Yadav is trying to lure non-Yadav OBC voters back to SP and has also promised that if his party comes to power next year, a caste census will be conducted in UP. will order.
Hence there is much speculation among various political parties that the Modi government may “announce” on the heels of the UP elections that it will conduct a caste census “in the near future” to blunt a major opposition party in those elections. .
When asked about this, a senior BJP leader told News18 that no decision has been taken yet one way or the other and it will be a “top-level political call”. The 2021 general census has already been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will begin next year. While most opposition parties want the caste census to be held at the same time as the general census, the Center may commit to conduct the caste census after the general census is over in 2022.
A senior government official admitted, “It seems that the entire political spectrum is united in conducting the caste census.” BJP ally Nitish Kumar’s pressure on the Modi government to order a caste census is reminiscent of the then UPA allies Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who in 2010 put similar pressure on the Manmohan Singh government for a caste census. The Center is of the view that if it does not pass an order, Kumar may go ahead and order the OBC count in the state itself.
All NDA allies in Bihar, including a BJP leader, HAM’s Jitin Ram Manjhi and VIP party’s Mukesh Sahni, are part of Kumar’s delegation to meet the PM. All 10 political parties of Bihar will be represented. “It is one thing to order a caste census and another thing to make that data public because the latter will open a Pandora’s box on the issue of violation of the 50% reservation limit set by the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case and a constitutional amendment. would be required. The Congress had also ordered a caste census in 2011, but never made it public,” argued a senior BJP leader.
Incidentally, in 2018, on the floor of the House, the then Home Minister and current Defense Minister Rajnath Singh had assured the House that the Census would be held in 2021 with OBC quota. Then in August 2018, the home ministry made a statement that a roadmap would be decided and the government would go for OBC data collection in the census. However, in an apparent U-turn in the current Parliament session, the government in a written reply made it clear that it has no plans to conduct caste census in future.
The SECC of 2011 was conducted for the general census, but the only socio-economic date of the former was released later in 2015, while the caste census was not made public. Both UP and NDA have used SECC data to identify beneficiaries under various welfare schemes, but have refrained from disclosing the caste data to anyone. States like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have sought empirical data from the Center, but so far in vain. Odisha has ordered its own caste census to count OBCs. A delegation of Biju Janata Dal MPs met Home Minister Amit Shah to demand caste census.
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