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Journalism of Courage
The exercise to include caste count in the ongoing Census during the biometric analysis stage will be formally approved in the next meeting of the Union Cabinet,leader of the House and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee assured the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Responding to queries raised by JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav,SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and BJP deputy leader Gopinath Munde,the Finance Minister said the government had made up its mind on implementation of caste count in the ongoing Census. It is a mere formality now. I do hope that in the next Cabinet meeting,it will be endorsed, he said.
Mukherjee added that although a GoM headed by him to look into the issue had been set up sometime back,it was not an empowered committee and hence,formal approval of the Union Cabinet was a necessity. The GoM decided that modality will be during House enumeration. And that the biometric features will go on alongside, he said.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour,Sharad Yadav asked the government to come clean on the issue. He pointed out that in spite of agreeing to governments call for several meetings and giving consent in writing,there was no movement still on inclusion of caste count in the Census operations. Mulayam Singh Yadav,too,added that the Prime Minister himself had assured the House that the Union Cabinet will act on the matter,yet nothing had been done so far.
Munde questioned the intent of the government,pointing out that the leader of the House had assured earlier that a decision would be taken in this session itself.
