New Delhi, May 6: The Centre has come under intense pressure to add caste enumeration to the ongoing census.
Most political parties have supported the inclusion of an additional column for caste in the census form and many senior cabinet ministers are in favour of the suggestion, although practical difficulties have posed a challenge.
The government will reveal its mind in Parliament tomorrow when home minister P. Chidambaram responds to today’s debate on the issue which witnessed unanimity among members in favour of a caste-based census.
Government sources said it would be difficult to brush aside the consensus in Parliament but pointed to practical difficulties in including caste in the ongoing exercise.
The Union cabinet met tonight but did not discuss the issue. Government sources feel that a hasty decision on the “very complicated matter” would create a “huge mess” as lack of uniformity in sub-caste classifications in states and enumerators’ inability to verify claims have to be taken into account.
The majority view in the government is that taking a U-turn under Parliament’s pressure would be difficult at this late stage but some kind of assurance could be thought of.
The government was isolated in the Lok Sabha as every party categorically demanded the inclusion of caste enumeration in the ongoing census.
Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad — all OBC leaders — warned the Centre against committing the blunder of omitting caste. The Bahujan Samaj Party, Biju Janata Dal, Telugu Desam Party, Trinamul Congress, DMK, CPM, CPI, ADMK, NCP, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and the Janata Dal (Secular) unambiguously supported caste enumeration.
The BJP too sang a different tune today as Gopinath Munde made a forceful plea for caste-based census, trying to water down his colleague Ananth Kumar’s speech which did not mention caste at all and focused on infiltration and terrorism.
The other BJP speaker, Hukumdev Narayan Yadav, too supported the Munde line, ending the ambiguity in the BJP’s position created by its senior Brahmin leader.
The Congress, however, continued to grapple with a dilemma.
The Congress’s first speaker, Bhakta Charan Das, said modern India should be casteless and no retrograde step should be taken in the 21st century to show that India had a caste-driven society. He appealed for emphasis on education, healthcare and development.
Most younger Congress MPs, from Shashi Tharoor to Anu Tandon to Lal Singh, merrily thumped the desk to cheer their progressive Dalit leader.
But the balloon soon burst as the veteran Beni Prasad Verma took a strident position, exploding the party’s carefully crafted ambiguity to smithereens. He said no party or government could act with prejudice in this matter. “What’s the meaning of merely counting population if it is not going to help in policy formulations? We should know what is the basis for giving reservation, 27 per cent to OBCs and 22.5 per cent to SCs. After 1931, we don’t have authentic figures,” Verma said.
Verma, a socialist who joined the Congress a few years ago, added: “The denial of social justice will trigger rebellion. We cannot give vague arguments to say that caste census will break the society…. There is overwhelming majority in the House in favour of caste enumeration.”
Sandeep Dikshit, who spoke after Verma, too, favoured a caste-based census.
The developments in the House had overtaken the party’s non-committal stand outside. Spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed had said a little earlier: “This is a very sensitive issue. We would like to take the views of every party and try to evolve a consensus.”
But some Congress leaders confronted the impression of a divide in the party, suggesting that the majority view supported inclusion of caste enumeration in the ongoing census despite the home minister’s reluctance.
Sources revealed that Pranab Mukherjee and Veerappa Moily had already told the Prime Minister that excluding caste would be unwise and politically counter-productive.
Ministers who opposed the idea included Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik and Vilasrao Deshmukh.
