Our government will conduct a country-wide caste census: Congress Working Committee
The Hindu
Congress to conduct nation-wide caste census, remove 50% cap on reservation, implement 33% women's quota in Lok Sabha/Assemblies. Rahul Gandhi calls it “progressive and powerful step” for emancipation of poor. CWC resolution condemns targeting of journalists & expresses anguish over Manipur crisis.
A Congress-led government will conduct a nation-wide caste census as part of the decadal census that was due in 2021, remove the cap of 50% on reservation through legislation and implement the women’s reservation law to provide 33% quota for women in Lok Sabha and Assemblies at the earliest, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) said in a resolution that was unanimously adopted on October 9.
Calling it a “historic resolution”, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said caste census was “a matter of ensuring justice and not politics” and asserted that the party-ruled States would be conducting caste surveys on the lines of Bihar.
“I think it [caste census] is a very progressive and powerful step for the emancipation of the poor people in our country,” Mr. Gandhi told reporters at a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters.
To underscore his point that the weaker sections are not getting their fair share, Mr. Gandhi asked for a show of hands from journalists to know how many of them were Dalits and other backward classes (OBCs).
Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi as someone who is “incapable” of doing the caste census, he said the Congress would either force the BJP to do it or force it to get out of the way. Asked if all the parties belonging to the Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc agreed to caste census, he said majority of the parties agreed with it but one or two parties might have a different view. “We are not a fascist system, we are quite flexible, if somebody has a slightly different opinion,” he said.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge set the tone with his opening remarks in which he told the CWC that to ensure the “rightful share of the weaker sections in welfare schemes, it is essential to have their socio-economic data”.
Terming it the party’s highest priority, chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) Sonia Gandhi is learnt to have said, “I am 100% with the caste census, we must get it done”.
While residents are worried over deaths due to diarrhoea in Vijayawada, officials still grapple to find the root cause. Contaminated drinking water supplied by VMC officials is the reason, insist people in the affected areas, but officials insist that efforts are on to identify the disease and that those with symptoms other than diarrhoea too are visiting the health camps.