New Delhi: There will be no negative impact on the upper caste voters due to party’s focus on OBCs, opined senior members of the Congress Working Committee on Sunday. The CWC will review the party’s pitch on Monday for a national caste census to counter the BJP ahead of the four States Assembly polls as well as the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
According to party insiders, there has been some concern within the party that focusing on the OBCs, which constitute the bulk of the population, may make the upper castes feel left out. Hence, the party may fine-tune its strategy to balance the focus on OBCs with some messaging for the upper castes as well and the CWC is expected to pass a resolution to affirm the Congress’s full support behind Rahul Gandhi’s promise of a national caste census if the opposition alliance INDIA comes to power next year.
After Rahul flagged the issue, the INDIA government in Bihar published caste census data while the Congress governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh announced to conduct of such surveys soon. The Congress government in Karnataka is preparing to publish caste census data after receiving the report of an expert panel in November while the Gujarat Congress has demanded that such a survey be conducted in the western state to counter the BJP government of Bhupendra Patel.
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“I don’t think there would be any negative impact of the caste census on the upper castes. What we are talking about here is a count of persons to determine the social breakup. Moreover, we are saying the caste census is needed for social welfare. This itself is not going to happen immediately, but will take a long time. Hence, no fallout is likely,” CWC member Avinash Pande told ETV Bharat.
Another CWC member Tariq Anwar also expressed similar views, “Overall, I see no impact of the OBC issue on the upper castes,” Anwar told ETV Bharat. However, party insiders said there may be “some fine-tuning of the OBC strategy and some kind of messaging for the upper castes to both affirm the party’s stand over the issue and strike a social balance” during the CWC meeting on Monday.
Another CWC member Kamleshwar Patel said the Congress has always supported all sections of society and noted that the case census issue will have an impact not only in the forthcoming four state Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, but also in the 2024 national elections as well.
“That is the reason the BJP is worried and is targeting our leader Rahul Gandhi through defamatory posters. The Congress works for the welfare of all sections, but the BJP has not done anything for the OBCs. When the Kamal Nath government came to power in 2018 in Madhya Pradesh, it had followed a 10 per cent quota for the economically backward upper castes and notified reservation to the OBCs in the local body polls. But, after the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government came to power in 2020, they got a court stay on the OBC quota notification, which took away the opportunity from the community,” Patel told ETV Bharat.
