With Rahul Gandhi announcing there will be caste surveys in Congress-ruled states, two Union ministers from the OBC category, Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupendra Yadav, attacked the Congress leader on Monday asserting that his father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had opposed the OBC quota recommended by the Mandal Commission. While Pradhan took to X, formerly Twitter, to attack Gandhi, Yadav, the BJP’s election in-charge for Madhya Pradesh, spoke to reporters in Bhopal. “Is it not true that his father Rajiv Gandhi had opposed 27-percent reservation for OBCs as per the Mandal Commission. Rahul Gandhi’s drama today is just a clumsy attempt to throw a veil around that sin,” Education Minister Pradhan wrote on X. “The Congress is trying to divide society for political gains in the garb of caste census. From independence till the days of UPA-2, the Congress was a strident opponent of a caste census. Rahul Gandhi should first tell us why Congress governments never conducted a caste census. Only the Centre has the constitutional right to conduct a caste census. Rahul Gandhi is only deceiving people by talking of a caste census.” Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav reminded Gandhi of his late father’s stand on OBC reservation. “Rahul Gandhi’s statement is just a lie. We all know that Rajiv Gandhi opposed the Mandal Commission. We know that Congress governments did not implement the Kaka Kalelkar Commission and Mandal Commission reports to block OBC reservations,” Yadav said. “When Rahul Gandhi was an MP and Dr Manmohan Singh was PM, they rejected the demand for a constitutional commission for OBCs. They know that a caste census is the right of the Centre, but cannot come out of their politics of lies. If he loves OBCs so much, Rahul Gandhi should tell us why OBC youth did not get reservation in jobs or education from 1950 to 1992.” In an oblique reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim at a recent rally that the Congress had abused him repeatedly to abuse OBCs, Yadav said, “Rahul Gandhi is habituated to abusing tallest OBC leaders. His track record on this count is not good. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from recruitments in universities to the Vishwakarma Yojana, OBCs are being given their due.” The Vishwakarma Yojana is aimed at people belonging to artisanal castes, mostly backward castes.
