Pressure on government for caste census worked, says Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said it was clear that the pressure his party put on the Union government for a caste census worked.

Hours earlier, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had approved the enumeration of caste in the next census. The Union government did not announce when the exercise would take place.

The Opposition has long been demanding a nationwide caste census, arguing that the exercise will help identify the true population of the country’s Other Backward Classes and other castes, in turn paving the way for policies such as expanded quotas.

Noting that the Congress did not intend to stop its demands related to the exercise, Gandhi said that it was the “will of the people of India and the [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi government has no option but to follow it”.

“We will ensure they conduct a comprehensive and consultative census – a people’s census, not a bureaucratic census,” the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said on X. “We will continue to press for the removal of the arbitrary 50% cap on reservations.”

The 50% cap on reservations was put in place by the Supreme Court in 1992 when it ruled that “no provision of reservation or preference can be so vigorously pursued as...

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