'PM Has Every Intention of Delaying Caste Census': Congress Flags One-Year Delay
New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday (April 30) while accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having “every intention of delaying the caste census” said that a year had passed since the Union government announced the caste census and yet, details of how it would be carried out are still awaited.
“The President of the Indian National Congress had written to the PM again on May 5 2025 on the issue of the caste census. That letter was not even acknowledged. The issues raised in that letter remain valid even now. In fact, they are more relevant after the recently-concluded special session of Parliament where it was evident that the PM has every intention of delaying the caste census,” said Congress MP, and the party’s general secretary media in-charge, Jairam Ramesh in a statement on X.
During the special session of parliament earlier this month, Samajwadi party MP and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav had accused the government of misusing delimitation to change the electoral map of the country, and demanded that the caste census should be done before any delimitation exercise.
The special session saw the Modi government's Lok Sabha expansion and delimitation plan fail after it could not gather two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha.
“They are running away from the census because the demand for caste census will rise, following which demand for reservations will rise," Yadav had said.
Union home minister Amit Shah had assured the House during the session that the caste enumeration will be done, and that at present, under Census 2027, only houses are being enumerated, "when citizens will be counted, caste will be counted."
However, Ramesh in his statement on Thursday pointed to the Modi government's repeated refusals to conduct a caste census before announcing it in April last year.
Ramesh said that the government had informed the Lok Sabha in July 2021 that as a matter of policy the government has decided not to enumerate caste-wise population.
In an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2021 the government had said that any directive by the Court to enumerate caste-wise population would be tantamount to interfering with a policy decision already taken by the Modi Govt.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, Modi said that the opposition’s demand for a caste census was indicative of "urban naxal" thought.
However, in what was seen as a sharp U-turn in the saffron party’s politics, the Union government on April 30 last year had announced that a caste census will be conducted along with the decadal census without specifying a timeline for the exercise.
"A full year has passed. The details of how this caste enumeration will be done are still awaited. There has been no dialogue with Opposition parties and state governments, let alone with experts in this subject," wrote Ramesh.
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