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Rahul Gandhi addresses an election rally in Kolar, Karnataka. (File image: News18)
BJP leaders say Rahul Gandhi’s demand originates from Hindi heartland allies like the RJD, JD(U), and also the Samajwadi Party, which have been demanding a caste census in a bid to break the Hindu consolidation of voters and bring back the ‘Mandal politics’ era
Ahead of the Karnataka elections, Rahul Gandhi has demanded a caste census after deliberations with other supporters of the move like Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav. The Congress had been against such a study for nearly 60 years till doing one in 2011. In Karnataka, former chief minister Siddaramaiah till 2018 did not release a caste census report despite commissioning one.
The 2011 survey was done after deep divisions emerged in the UPA cabinet with several senior ministers like P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, and Pawan Kumar Bansal as well as senior Congress MPs objecting to a caste census and a group of ministers (GoM) never reaching a conclusion over it. But the UPA government finally succumbed to its regional allies, overturning its stated policy position of decades of not doing a caste census. It took five years to complete the survey at a cost of over Rs 4,000 crore but it was riddled with technical flaws and never became public. Rahul Gandhi now wants this 2011 caste census to be made public.
The demand was made by the former Congress chief in poll-bound Karnataka where former CM Siddaramaiah had also kicked off a caste census in 2015 in his earlier term as chief minister but never released the data before the 2018 assembly elections that year, sensing it would be counterproductive to his party’s chances. Siddaramamiah now claims the caste census exercise was only completed later in the Congress-JD(S) government but then CM Kumaraswamy did not accept the report.
Siddaramaiah has been demanding the caste census done under his government in Karnataka be made public but the Congress objects to the 4% Muslim reservation quota being distributed among the Lingyats and Vokkaligas in the state by the BJP.
Between 1951 and 2011, Congress prime ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru were against a caste census while PMs like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had put the Mandal Commission report on the back burner. When a caste census was finally started in 2011, there was a gross delay in starting the enumeration work and slow preparedness of many states.
The BJP government did not release the caste data once it was ready in 2016, citing technical flaws in it.
BJP leaders say Rahul Gandhi’s demand originates from Hindi heartland allies like the RJD, JD(U), and also the Samajwadi Party, which have been demanding a caste census in a bid to break the Hindu consolidation of voters and bring back the ‘Mandal politics’ era by wooing castes back into their fold. The BJP’s politics has been the opposite of that, combining all castes under one umbrella of welfarism through various schemes, and Hindutva.
A recent meeting between Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar, and Tejashwi Yadav in Delhi seems to have made the Congress also warm up to the caste census bogey. Nitish, while with the NDA last year, led a Bihar all-party delegation to the Prime Minister demanding a caste census, but the Centre had not agreed to it.
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