Caste Census Debate: As the caste-census debates have entered the core of Indian politics in the last one year, the Congress-led INDIA bloc is sharpening its attack on the BJP with every passing day. A day after BJP’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) extended its conditional support to the caste census, former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav today launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government over the issue of caste census.
The RJD chief took to social media platform X and said that the opposition bloc INDIA will put pressure on the centre with so much intensity that it will be compelled to carry out the census.
Continuing his attack at the government, the RJD supremo said that the time has come for the Dalits, backward, tribals and poor to show unity. “We will hold RSS, BJP by the ear, make them do sit-ups and get the caste census done. What authority do they have that they refuse to conduct a caste census? We will force them so much that they will have to do it. The time has come for the Dalits, backward, tribals and poor to show unity,” Lalu Prasad said in a post on X in Hindi.
The former Bihar CM returned to Patna on Monday after a routine check-up in Singapore. His kidney transplant operation was successfully done in Singapore in December 2022.
His remarks came a day after the RSS said it would extend support to caste census only if the data collected were used for the welfare of the underprivileged and not for political reasons.
On Sunday, September 1, the RJD organised a statewide one-day sit-in, calling for a nationwide caste census and the inclusion of a quota hike by the Bihar government in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.
While addressing party workers in Patna, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had alleged that the NDA government at the Centre and in the state are ‘against reservation for the deprived section of the society’ and against caste census.
The former Bihar Deputy CM had levelled charges at the central government saying that the government has misled the Parliament and people over the inclusion of hiked quota for deprived castes in Bihar in the 9th schedule of the Constitution.
