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Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressed a press conference at the AICC office in New Delhi on Wednesday
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SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
The Centre should make a time-bound commitment regarding completing the caste census and chalk out Budget provisions for the same, Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition and Congress MP said on Wednesday.
“We see the caste census as a new paradigm of development in the country,” said Gandhi, who was speaking at a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office in New Delhi.
His comments came hours after the BJP-led NDA government made an announcement approving caste enumeration in the country’s upcoming national census. This would be the first time since Independence that caste enumeration would happen.
According to Gandhi, the Congress feels there is a “Telangana model” which can be adopted at the national level, and the party is willing to “handhold the Centre” in designing the Central caste census. The blueprint for Telangana had been created after a thorough stakeholder consultation and has “granular level information”. This is in sharp contrast to the Bihar model.
On cap of 50%
“We also need to see the representation of OBCs, Dalits, and the caste-wise participation in the power structure and in institutions of India,” he said.
“We want a people’s census, not a bureaucratic census,” Gandhi added. “We want mass census, open tech census and it should be designed accordingly.”
According to him, there exist laws that allow reservation in private educational institutions. These laws, he said, have to be implemented by the Centre.
Gandhi also said, a cap of 50 per cent reservation was “holding back development” and “this has to be done away with now.”
“We have been building opinion at the grassroot level on having a caste census. And we welcome the Centre’s move to take into consideration our long standing demand,” the Leader of Opposition said.
Published on April 30, 2025
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