BJP slams Rahul Gandhi, says Congress always opposed caste census

NEW DELHI: Citing the rule of former Congress PMs including the late Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and the two terms of UPA, BJP on Tuesday asserted that Congress had constantly opposed caste census for decades and their current stand on it is plain hypocrisy. "Rahul Gandhi has been attacking the Modi government on caste census. With this, Rahul Gandhi has stooped to a new level of hypocrisy. The same caste census was labelled impractical by Congress' government, but Rahul Gandhi's deceit has no limits. Even Nehru was against the caste census," a senior BJP functionary said.

While campaigning in poll-bound Karnataka, Rahul Gandhi has been pressing for caste census, an issue on which Congress and other opposition parties including its allies in Bihar, JD(U) and RJD, are on the same page and plan to forge a united opposition front against the Modi government. BJP, on the other hand, is yet to make its stand clear even as the party continues to highlight how the Congress has been hypocritical, cooling its heels over the issue for decades.
"In 2018, the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government did not publish the findings of the caste-based census before the Karnataka elections. Congress had not published the data for three years after the caste census was conducted when they were in power. This shows Congress's outrageous stand and hypocrisy on the caste-based census," BJP leader said.

The BJP functionary said that the issue of the caste-based census was first informally discussed in 1951 when Jawaharlal Nehru was the PM. "He (Nehru) didn't want a caste-based census to be conducted in the country," the BJP leader said.
He said after independence, the Nehru government rejected the demand for a caste census and Indira Gandhi's and Rajiv Gandhi's governments decided to put the Mandal Commission report on the back burner. "Rajiv Gandhi called the Mandal Commission a can of worms and suggested that the commission was divisive for the country," the BJP leader said.
He said that in 2010, a group of ministers headed by Pranab Mukherjee was formed to decide on the caste census but it could never reach a conclusion, which made it evident that the Congress top brass was against the caste census. "In 2010, the Congress government had called the caste census impractical."