An 11-member all-party delegation from Bihar led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, comprising his arch-rival Tejashwi Yadav and a state BJP representative, will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 23 to ask the Centre to order a Caste Census to count the OBCs.
This is a tricky 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 biggest state after a hiatus of 14 years in 2017 on the back of strong support from the OBCs but it also remains committed to its core upper-caste voter in Uttar Pradesh, especially at a time when the construction of the Ram Temple is expected to be a major poll plank in the 2022 elections.
Sensing this, Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party has upped the ante by speaking vociferously on the issue of the caste census in Parliament and his party spreading the refrain in UP that “hum to kiss ginti main aate hi nahi hain” (We OBCs do not come in any count)”. By doing so, Yadav is trying to attract the non-Yadav OBC voter back towards the SP and he has also promised to order a caste census in UP if his party comes to power next year.
There is hence a lot speculation amongst various political parties that Modi government may “announce” close on the heels of the UP elections that it will conduct a caste census “in the near future” in order to blunt a major opposition plank in those polls.
When asked about this, a senior BJP leader told News18 that there is no decision one way or the other so far and the same will be a “top-level political call”. The normal Census of 2021 is already 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 conducted alongside the normal census, the Centre may commit to conducting a caste census after the normal census is over in 2022.
“The entire political spectrum seems to be united in having a caste census”, a senior government official admitted. The pressure from BJP-ally Nitish Kumar on the Modi government to order a caste census is reminiscent of then UPA allies Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav putting similar pressure on the Manmohan Singh government in 2010 to have a caste census. The Centre believes that if it does not order one, Kumar may go ahead and order an 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 Sahani, are part of Kumar’s delegation to meet PM. All 10 political parties of Bihar will be represented. “It is one thing to order a caste census and another to make that data public as latter will open a Pandora’s Box on the issue of breaching the 50% reservation cap fixed by Supreme Court in Indira Sawhney case and a constitutional amendment would be required. Congress also ordered a caste census in 2011 but never made it public,” a senior BJP leader reasoned.
Incidentally, in 2018, on the floor of the House, then Home Minister and the present Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had assured the House that the Census will be conducted in 2021 with OBC quota. Then in August, 2018, the Home Ministry gave a statement that a roadmap will be decided and the government will go for the OBC data collection in the census. However, in an apparent U-turn in the present Parliament session, the government made it clear in a written answer that it had no plans to conduct a Caste Census in the future at all.
The SECC of 2011 was conducted for the normal Census but only socio-economic date of the former was released later in 2015 while the caste enumeration was not made public. Both the UP and NDA have used SECC data for identifying beneficiaries under various welfare schemes but refrained from making the caste data public to anybody. States like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have asked for empirical data from the Centre of the same but in vain so far. Odisha has ordered its own caste census to count the OBCs. A delegation of Biju Janata Dal MPs had met Home Minister Amit Shah demanding a caste census.
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