New Delhi: After the Centre told Supreme Court that caste Census of Backward Classes is “administratively difficult and cumbersome" and excluding such information from the purview of Census is a "conscious policy decision", Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav slammed the Centre over its decision. Yadav said that the caste census is the source of development of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the backward classes in the country.
Yadav said that all the opposition parties should unite on the issue as the policies which will be implemented after the census will benefit the weaker sections of the society. All the political parties should unite and find a legal way to fight as it has become a national issue, he said.
Recently, a 10-party delegation from Bihar, led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding a caste Census. “Everyone put forward their views while demanding a caste census. The Prime Minister listened to us carefully. We hope that a way will be found for conducting a caste census,” the CM said after the meeting.
Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly Tejashwi Yadav also had written a letter to 33 senior leaders of the country seeking their support on the issue of the caste census. In his letter, Yadav terming Centre 'callous' said, “Caste system which Dr B. R. Ambedkar, referred to as a system of graded inequality, has been a great source of disadvantage for a significantly large section of the population over decades. Although caste plays such a discriminatory role in our socio-economic life and confines privileges into only a few hands, no reliable and wide-ranging data is available for more than fifty per cent of our population.”
READ: Tejashwi Yadav bats for caste-census, dashes off letters to 33 opposition leaders
