(Express Illustrations | Amit Bandre) 
India

Caste census: ‘BJP not opposed, but for scientific method’

The BJP’s OBC Morcha on Tuesday said the party is not opposed to the caste census, but asserted a wider scientific study before the census.

Rajesh Kumar Thakur

NEW DELHI:  The BJP’s OBC Morcha on Tuesday said the party is not opposed to the caste census, but asserted a wider scientific study before the census. Speaking to this newspaper, national president of BJP OBC Morcha K Laxman said, “Let it be clear to all first that we (the BJP) are not opposed to the caste census. But what requires before it is a wider scientific study on the caste configurations and OBCs.”

The exercises was conducted earlier but that yielded no results and a huge money government went in waste, he added. Accusing Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge of playing the ‘politics of survival’ with the issues like that of caste census, Laxman asked: “Why did not the Congress make the data of 2011 caste census public even thought it continued in power for the longest time? Rahul Gandhi is resorting to a ‘utilitarian politics of survival’ with the people of OBCs. Gandhi will have to answer the OBCs as why his party did not make the caste census data public.”

Calling the Congress an anti-OBCs party, he said: “It humiliates the OBCs more often than not in politics and recently it was proved whenthe court convicted Rahul Gandhi on the charge of humiliating OBC in the Modi surname.” He said for the first time, 27 ministers in the central cabinet are from OBC community. 

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