NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said Modi government was plotting to divide the OBCs into smaller groups to dilute their bargaining power, in what many see as a veiled attack on proposed sub-categorisation of backward communities.
“Now, they are trying to divide the OBCs into small pieces. Their objective is to splinter the OBCs so that their power is divided and they cannot unitedly fight for a demand,” Rahul said at a party convention of OBCs earlier this week.
The reference came in the backdrop of PM Modi’s comments on “sub-categorisation” at a rally in
Baghpat on May 27. Justice Rohini Commission is working on the issue.
If Rahul’s comments raised speculation that Congress may oppose sub-categorisation, there are indications that opposition backward outfits are set to demand that the Centre make public the “caste census” under wraps for four years — a tricky issue they hope would trap the Centre and not let BJP succeed in its plan to wean away Mandal communities.
Manoj Jha, RJD MP and Delhi University professor, says, “Sub-categorisation would have looked legitimate if SECC data was made public. It is for equitable distribution of affirmative action benefits and SECC has mapped rural households through their economic status and caste both.”
Designed to address the complaint of inequitable distribution of reservation benefits, sub-categorisation entails dividing OBCs into subgroups of castes of similar socio-economic status and apportioning the 27% quota among them in proportion to their population. The move would hit stronger OBCs — like Yadavs and Kurmis — that lead the Mandal outfits in the north like RJD and SP, and please minor backwards.
Mandal outfits have decided to demand the publication of OBC data that was collated through socio-economic caste census (SECC) of rural households.
Modi government processed the socio-economic data for targeted welfare schemes but did not move on caste data.
The opposition idea is to “spread the message” among their core constituency that BJP is trying to divide the OBCs without making public their share in national population and socio-economic data of differentcommunities.
Opposition leaders argue sub-categorisation is essentially political. Like in Bihar, CM
Nitish Kumar left Paswans out of “maha Dalit” category but after he joined NDA of which
Ram Vilas Paswan is a member, he announced ‘inclusion’ of community in “maha-Dalit” category.