NEW DELHI: Encouraged by the political inputs from Bihar—one of the most caste-ridden of all elections in the country—the BJP-led government at the Centre has decided to go ahead with the publication of the controversial caste census. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has directed the Expert Committee, headed by NITI Aayog vice-chairperson Arvind Panagariya, to speed up the process of verification and classification of the caste data.
The Expert Committee, comprising representatives from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, was not given any deadline till date. Now the government wants it to expedite the task. According to sources, the PMO wants the census by December but discrepancies are so large that officials hope it will be done by March. “There is an unexplained urgency on the part of the higher-ups,” said an official.
The immediate political reason behind this change of mind on the part of the government, which had earlier decided against the release of data, is learnt to be the “positive inputs from the ground”, especially from Bihar. “It is understood that the caste data is in correlation with the ruling party’s assumption that Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) coupled with the SC/STs form a stronger chunk than the mainstream Other Backward Castes (OBCs)—mostly Yadavs—who are consolidating behind the NDA,” a Ministry of Tribal Affairs official said.
Apparently, the “political inputs from Bihar’’ is in tune with the party’s assessment of the caste equation and has given the ruling party the much-needed courage to go ahead with the census. LJP leader Ramvilas Paswan had also been asking the government to release the census data on the ground that it would “expose” the likes of RJD leader Lalu Prasad.
Naturally, the most controversial aspect in the caste census, the first since 1932, would be the quantum of OBCs. Leaders like Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad had been demanding the release of the data on the ground of their assumptions that the OBCs make up higher numbers than the reservation policy accounts for.
But it seems that the release of caste data is a case of ‘easier said than done’ as the officials are grappling with the discrepancies regardless of the political push. “Errors and discrepancies in the caste census data are of enormous proportion,” said the official adding that the Expert Committee is quite under pressure due to the renewed interest on the part of the government. The Committee had pointed out nearly two crore errors and had asked the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to direct the states to correct the data at their level.