New Delhi:
Congress’s Rahul Gandhi said today that the Centre’s decision to club caste census with next year’s population census is a welcome step though taken under pressure. He offered to help the Centre “design” a roadmap for the census, declaring that the caste survey done by Telangana was better than the one by Bihar, though it was the first. He also laid down a broad roadmap to achieve social justice – outlining the next three steps which the Congress, he said, will push for.
Calling the caste census a “new paradigm of development”, he said, “It was our vision, we are glad they have adopted it”.
His party, he said, now wishes to “go beyond” and see what is the “participation of 90 per cent people”.
“The 50 per cent cap on reservations is becoming an impediment to the progress of our country and to the progress of Backward Castes, Dalits and Adivasis and we want this barrier to be eliminated,” he told reporters this evening.
“We have put enough pressure on the government to get the caste census done and we want a date by when it is done and we want to put pressure on the government to see that the 50 per cent cap is destroyed,” he said.
“After that there is a third thing — Article 15.5 which is reservation in private educational institutions, which is already a law. We want that law to be implemented as soon as possible,” he added.
The BJP, though, has called out the Congress claims – especially the one that caste census was their long-standing demand.
While making the announcement this morning after a cabinet meeting, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the party always opposed a caste census and the category was never included in censuses since Independence.
“Congress governments have always opposed a caste census. In 2010, the late Dr Manmohan Singh said the matter of caste census should be considered… a group was formed (and) most political parties recommended it. But the Congress decided to conduct a survey…” he said.
